“Buick, isn't it?”
“Yessir. Buick Roadmaster. Biggest they made back then.” Maizie turned aside coughing into her hankie.
Beth said, “You take better care of this old car than you do yourself. Have you had your heart checked lately? Or are you just dosing yourself up with—”
“What I dose myself with done healed you up plenty a times, Missy.”
Beth couldn’t deny it, but fear made her harsh.
Charlie opened the car door. “Ready to go, Stinkerbelle?”
“Don't call me Stinkerbelle, Daddy,” Chrissie said sternly as she climbed into the backseat.
Maizie laughed and said, “Honey, you sound jus' like your mama used to.” She pointed her finger toward a stuffed lamb that had once been white, but was now a less-pristine shade of well-loved gray, tucked under Chrissie's elbow. “Who’s this? I b’lieve I might have seen him somewhere before.” She rolled her eyes at Beth.
Chrissie held him up for Maizie's inspection. “He was Mommy's, then she got too big to take care of him, and now he's mine. His name’s Lamby. Mommy named him that.”
“Well, it looks like he could use a new eye.”
Chrissie put the tip of her finger into the empty socket. “His ear is almost off, too.”
Maizie bent to take a closer look. “You know what? I've tended him a time or two when your mama had him. If you want, when we get home, we'll see about fixin' him up. How about it?”
Chrissie nodded and scooted over to make room for her daddy. Beth settled in front.
On their way through town, Beth pointed out the courthouse and the old Madison Avenue Theater next door.
“I bet I saw every Disney movie ever made in there,” she said. “Nothing's changed.”
Maizie said, “That movie theater's been shut down since right after you graduated high school back in nineteen and sixty-five, wasn’t it? Near twenty years ago now, like most of the rest of downtown.”
“Oh, Maizie, don’t remind me,” Beth said. She didn’t want to think of how many years had passed. They entered the freeway, and she turned to look out the back window, watching the outskirts of Wither Creek disappear. “I used to think this place was such a no-account burg. Full of rednecks. Never anything going on. I couldn't wait to leave. Now it looks good to me.”
Maizie said, “Well, there’s fixin’ to be a lot of changes. Been some developers out here, from Japan. I heard they're payin' top dollar for the land. Some folks has already sold.” Maizie put her foot down on the accelerator. The Buick gathered speed.
Beth said, “Why do they want to spoil everything?”
“Don’ know.” Maizie glanced at Beth. “Could be folks in Wither Creek are wantin' their town to be known as somethin' more than a no-account burg full a rednecks.” She glanced in the rearview mirror. “What sort of work you do, Mister Charlie?”
“Construction, and it’s just Charlie, please.”
“All right, Charlie. Should be plenty of that sorta work here pretty quick.”
Beth turned to look at him.
What? his expression seemed to ask. She shook her head and faced front, not wanting him to see her anxiety, yet wishing she were next to him, that she could lean against him.
A low mutter of thunder rumbled in the distance. Maizie commented that it had looked like rain for days. She shook her finger at the sky. “All them clouds do is tease us.”
Beth watched the passing scenery. She'd forgotten what pretty country it was. The land seemed to glow, a contoured brocade of tangled silvery green. Maizie's old unair-conditioned Buick dashed along, wind blowing through the open windows, ruffling Beth's hair, the front of her shirt. It smelled of heat, and faintly, of the pines that crowded the road. As a little girl, she remembered lying on her back to watch the sway of their supple green tops high overhead; the whisper of long-needled branches was like the voice of dreams. Daddy had always said the pines were an example of how to bend without breaking.
Why think of that now? When she hadn't in years? Why did she hear him speaking? See his image behind her eyes? The old anger rose and threatened to cut her breath. If only he hadn’t died. How different would it be? Would she be safer? Better off? She thought so, knew so.
“Maizie?” she said, “Is Black Knight still stabled at the farm?”
“Yes, honey, he is,” Maizie said and then pressed her lips together as if to keep herself from saying more.
Beth scarcely noticed. “I can’t wait to see him again.”
Maizie looked at Charlie in the rearview mirror. “Has this child ever told you how she slept with that horse most every night for a month after its mama died? She'd come out of Knight’s stall of a morning smellin' so you couldn't tell which one was the animal. I can still see it so clear, the way that little ol’ colt followed her most anywhere.”
“He changed after the fire,” Beth said. “Remember? He turned skittish and wild. He acted like he didn’t know me.”
“Hmmph. Skittish and wild ain't the half of it now.”
“I wish I hadn’t had to leave him.”
“Horse is what done killed your daddy and started this whole mess.”
Beth shot Maizie an unhappy glance.
Charlie said, “Are you talking about the horse you promised Chrissie she could ride? It’s the same one that threw your dad?”
What do you know about horses? The question hung in Beth’s mind. Oh, he could bet on them; Charlie could bet on anything, and he had. He owed so much money to the bookies in Miami, they’d had to leave Florida in a hurry. But as far as Beth knew, Charlie had never ridden a horse in his life, much less fed or exercised one, or mucked out a stall.
That’s what she’d been doing the day they met at Calder Race Course in Miami. She’d worked there as a stable hand until they got married. They might not have, but she’d found out she was pregnant with Chrissie, and when she’d told Charlie, he’d done the honorable thing. That’s just who he was. And he loved her. Beth knew that.
“I been tellin’ your mama she’s got to do somethin' with that horse,” Maizie said. “He won't hardly let nobody near him these days.”
“What about Warren? He could always handle Knight.”
“Tinker done fired Warren. He been tryin' to take care of Knight hisself, and that 'rrangement ain't been workin' out too good.”
“That’s because Jason doesn't know one thing about running a farm, never mind caring for a horse.” It was more than that, though, Beth thought. Jason had a cruel streak. He was just flat-out mean.
“Who’s Warren?” Charlie asked.
“Our foreman,” Beth answered. “He’s handled the farm for Mama since Daddy passed.”
“So, what about the accident that killed your dad?” Charlie asked. “You’ve never told me much about how it happened.”
Was that an accusation? Beth didn’t know. She looked over the seatback. Chrissie was slumped against Charlie soundly sleeping. “There was a brush fire,” she said. “Smoke everywhere. Knight took Daddy off into some trees.”
Maizie’s voice rode under Beth's. “Everythin’ scared that horse. After the way y'all babied him, it's hard to figure, but once he got growed up, he didn’t want nobody on his back. Told your daddy a dozen times.”
“A branch caught Daddy right here.” Beth rested her hand high on her chest. “Knocked him off. No one knew anything was wrong until Knight came back to the barn alone. By the time we found Daddy, he'd been in the woods all night. He was in shock. He’d lost a lot of blood. Too much. He died three days later.”
Charlie’s expression softened.
Beth said how before he died, her daddy made her promise not to let Warren shoot Black Knight.
Charlie said, “That was a lot for you to handle.”
“Daddy knew how much I loved Knight. He said give him time and he’d come around; he’d be his old sweet-natured self, but then I left.”
They turned right, bumped over the cattle guard. They were on the private drive
now and Beth knew she’d soon see the house. Her hands and feet had gone cold. They crossed the one-lane stone bridge that spanned Wither Creek. A sluggish stream of water, it flowed east and emptied into the lake where she’d learned to swim. What year was that? Had she been seven or eight? But the sense of her anticipation and dread made it impossible to concentrate.
There, among the trees, she caught glimpses of it, fragments of weathered white brick, darker flashes of black mortar and trim peeping through the leafy fringe, and now, visible as they crested the rise, a bit of railing attached to a section of roof. “The widow's walk,” she murmured, and feeling Charlie's stare, she turned quickly and found his glance.
“What is it?” he asked.
But the question was too huge, and in any case her tongue felt rooted to her mouth. Without answering, she faced front again feeling the blunt force of Charlie’s gaze heat her scalp.
Look for The Ninth Step (available now) and The Last Innocent Hour (coming in the fall of 2011) at online retailers.
Table of Contents
Also by Barbara Taylor Sissel
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Reading Group Questions
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THE NINTH STEP, Excerpt
Chapter One
THE LAST INNOCENT HOUR, Excerpt
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Table of Contents
Also by Barbara Taylor Sissel
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Reading Group Questions
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THE NINTH STEP, Excerpt
Chapter One
THE LAST INNOCENT HOUR, Excerpt
Chapter One
Chapter Two
The Volunteer Page 33