Bandits could open fire on them from both sides of the road at the same time, catching them in a deadly cross-fire with little chance of survival.
They were tired, stressed and frustrated at their pace.
The I-335 sign lessoned some of that, and they’d gone to bed the night before in relatively good spirits.
Getting on the interstate highway would mean they’d be much safer, for it would make an ambush much less likely.
Or at least a lot more difficult to spring upon them.
Sarah had been struggling with an additional problem which was hers alone and of her own making.
She’d long contended, to her sister Karen’s dismay, that Dave needed to know about her infidelity back in Ely.
And she’d always planned to tell him.
She was just trying to find the right moment, for as much as he needed and deserved to know, she knew it was going to hurt him more than anything she’d ever done in their long relationship.
Knowing that going in, the very least she could do was to try to minimize the damage and the pain.
To tell him when it would cause the least amount of agony, if such mitigation was indeed possible.
She wasn’t sure that it was.
But she’d try to do it nonetheless.
They’d been on the road for a week now.
The stress was starting to get to Sarah, and Dave was starting to notice.
The afternoon before, as they trudged down the long and lonely highway, he’d told her he was worried about her.
“Why?”
“Because you look like something’s eating at you. Like you’re carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. And I have to tell you, honey, as pretty as your shoulders are, they’re not strong enough to carry the world.
“Is there something I can do to help whatever’s bugging you?”
Knowing her husband was worrying about her so much after she’d betrayed him bothered her even more. In fact, she felt so bad she grew nauseous and threw up her dinner.
At least that made Dave feel a bit better. He wrongly concluded she seemed stressed because she was suffering from indigestion. And that, he knew, would pass in time.
She knew, though, that it was time she told him.
She almost took him aside that night, as the others bedded down.
Then she thought better of it.
He was exhausted and needed a good night’s sleep.
News of the sort she had to give him would likely prevent that.
He’d almost certainly be awake all night long, looking up at the stars and trying to make sense of her words.
And even more, make sense of her doing what she did.
She didn’t tell him at bedtime.
When he came to her, concerned that her stomach was bothering her, she assured him she’d be okay.
And that much wasn’t a lie.
She’d be okay… after she talked to him in the morning and came clean.
It was Sarah who was awake most of the night, looking at those same stars through the mesh ceiling of her tent, and wondering what madness could have made her spend time with any man other than her husband.
Much less a man like John Parker.
It was a little more than a month since they’d started the affair, and two weeks since she’d ended it.
But still she had no answers.
She couldn’t tell time by watching the way the moon and stars moved during the night like Dave could.
For most of the night she didn’t know whether it was ten p.m. or three a.m. They looked pretty much the same to her.
Knowing that, she watched the sky for any hint it was starting to lighten.
And once she noticed it happening she knew the dawn wasn’t far away.
She decided it was time.
Chapter 34
She very tenderly lifted Beth’s skinny little arm from where it lay upon her chest and rolled from beneath it.
Beth stirred, but just a tiny bit, for she was as exhausted as anyone else.
She paused for a moment, to see whether her youngest was going to awaken, but that wasn’t meant to be.
Lindsey was in the back of the tent, softly snoring.
She was taking the place Sarah usually slept, but Sarah had asked to switch places, next to the tent’s zippered doorway, when they’d gone to bed the night before.
Lind hesitated at first. She enjoyed sleeping close to her father’s side, separated by the thin tent wall, and listening to his steady breathing. It gave her a sense of security.
At the same time, though, she knew her mother had thrown up once a few hours before and thought she might feel a need to do so again.
If that happened, if her mother felt the urge to vomit again, it was better for her to be able to get out of the tent quickly.
Lind assumed that was the reason for Sarah’s asking. It never dawned on her that her mom might want to be the first one up and out so she could finally get some private time with her husband.
The coast was clear. Both daughters were sleeping, and so was Sal.
Sarah could hear his snoring from ten feet away despite the walls of two tents separating them.
She very quietly unzipped the tent’s flap and stepped out, careful not to step on Dave’s arm in the process.
She zipped the flap closed just as quietly, then placed her hand on her husband’s face.
Even in his sleep, even when exhausted, he seemed to recognize her touch.
Instead of awaking with a start he opened his eyes and smiled.
The sky was barely light enough for him to see her face over him, her finger placed in front of her lips in the classic “shhhh” gesture.
With her forefinger she signaled for him to follow her. Then she walked a hundred feet or so down the highway and leaned against the side of an abandoned Cadillac.
Dave was only half awake and his mind wasn’t yet firing on all cylinders.
But being a man who’d been missing his wife for the better part of two years, he added two and two together and decided he was going to get lucky.
“Well,” he joked. “I haven’t made love in the back seat of a car since high school, but I’m game.”
It was ironic that he had romance on his mind just before he was to hear of his wife’s infidelity with another man.
Sarah felt a fresh stab of pain in her heart.
“No… Dave… I just want to talk. And let’s do it out here, where the air is fresh.”
He couldn’t hide the look of confusion upon his face.
“Um… okay…”
“Dave, I love you with every fiber of my being. You know that. Since this whole crisis started I’ve missed you and thought about you every hour of every day.”
“Me too, honey.”
“Dave… I’ve betrayed you. I’m so sorry. I’m sorrier than I’ve ever been in my life. I know there’s nothing I can say or do to justify what I did or to cause you less pain, and that’s the worst of it. You of all people… you, the best husband and father of all time… you more than anybody else I know deserves being hurt the least.”
“Honey, I don’t understand. What on earth are you talking about?”
“Dave, I cheated on you. I cheated on you while you were off risking your life to find and save our daughter.”
He was stunned.
His mouth opened, but no words came out. He didn’t know what to say. And it wouldn’t matter if he had. His tongue wasn’t working and his mouth went instantly dry.
She wanted to cry out to him.
She wanted to tell him, “Say something! Curse me. Tell me to go to hell. Tell me I’m the worst woman on the face of the earth.”
She wanted to say that.
But she didn’t.
Instead she gave him time. She let her words sink in.
She wanted to take his hand. She wanted to hold him.
But she felt she no longer had the right.
Dave’s head was spinning.
>
He wondered if he was dreaming. Thought maybe she never stepped out of the tent. Had never awakened him. Had never asked him to follow her to the Caddie.
He almost pinched himself.
But he was afraid he’d find out it wasn’t a dream. In some odd way, her words were easier to deal with as long as the chance he was dreaming was still there.
She decided to take a chance and reached out to him.
He backed away.
She felt another stab of pain in her heart.
She deserved his hesitation. She knew that.
It still hurt, and she knew she deserved that too.
Presented with such news and no other information, it was only natural for Dave to try to provide his own answers. The first one… why?… was unanswerable. The next logical question… who?… was equally puzzling.
He’d put her on a plane to Kansas City a year and a half before to visit her sister and brother in law Tommy.
He knew of no other men she’d have been around. None she’d be tempted to stray with.
“Tommy?”
Even as he said his brother-in-law’s name he felt almost ashamed for suspecting him. For Tommy was a decent and God-fearing man.
As he uttered Tommy’s name his face was skewed in agony. For he could think of no other likely suspect.
“No. God no. Certainly not Tommy.”
“Then who?”
“A man named Parker. He was one of the men who held us captive. One of the men you killed.”
It was too much for Dave.
Dave was the strongest man Sarah had ever met.
But now the man she’d always called her “Superman” was more a little boy than a bear of a man.
He went to his knees and gently started to sob.
Chapter 35
Amy felt like she was back in school again.
And that was a good thing, for she’d always liked school, before that darned old blackout came and ruined everything.
In school she had a purpose, for she was one of those gifted students who loved going to class. The best times of her young life thus far were spent in school, for in school she was praised for her efforts.
At home she was constantly berated by a father she couldn’t please.
At school she was safe.
At home it was hit and miss.
Her brother, on the other hand was indifferent to school.
He didn’t mind going, necessarily.
And he enjoyed being away from his father during the day, since he took the brunt of Ronald’s physical abuse.
But if was up to him he’d just play with his friends at the park all day long.
He just didn’t share his big sister’s yearning for learning.
So it was a good thing, then, that Monica put Amy in charge of taking notes as she schooled them on something far more important than the ABCs or coloring within the lines.
Amy was taking notes they’d need to survive, and whether they struggled or thrived depended in large part in the job she did writing down what Monica was teaching them.
Today’s lesson was catching and preparing rainwater for drinking.
One of the things Dave Speer had done, bless his heart, was to place a line of rain barrels against the back of the house.
He’d hung rain gutter across the entire length of the house so that every drop of rain which fell on the south side of his roof would wind up in a barrel.
Provided, of course, that the lids were taken off the barrels before the rain started.
The downspout which would normally allow the water to drain into the back yard was blocked. That would have forced the rain to back up in the gutter, except for the small hole Dave drilled directly above each barrel.
It was a great idea, and Monica was impressed.
She’d never met Dave, and she hoped she never would. But she definitely admired his handiwork.
Monica had Amy carry one end of a ladder from the garage and into the back yard.
“What’s this for, Mama?”
“I want to check the rain gutter to see if it needs to be cleaned. The cleaner the water the safer it’ll be to drink.”
She struggled to get up the ladder and prayed she wouldn’t get dizzy and fall.
The gutter was surprisingly clean.
There were no leaves to clear, since the mighty oak tree in the front yard only dropped leaves on the front part of the roof.
There were two trees in the back yard; a pecan and a peach. And neither was close enough to the house to pose a problem.
She started down and felt a dizzy spell coming on.
She made the mistake of looking down, and that made it worse.
Her mind was still clear enough, though, to stop and hang on until the spell passed.
“Are you okay, Mama?”
Amy was prepared to go up after her mother, but didn’t have a clue what to do after that.
“I’ll be okay in a minute, honey. Just hold the ladder as best as you can. If I start to fall, get out of the way.”
Amy began to chant, under her breath so her mom couldn’t hear, “Please don’t fall. Please don’t fall. Please don’t fall.”
It must have worked, for Monica didn’t fall. The dizzy spell passed and she climbed to the ground unscathed.
“Okay, honey, it’s time to write. You ready?”
“Yes ma’am.”
The two sat on the deck together, Monica very slowly giving dictation and Amy even more slowly taking it.
“Okay, at the top of the page write, ‘When it looks like rain.’”
“Okay, got it.”
“Remove the lids from all the rain barrels.”
“Check.”
“Bring everything you can find inside the house that’ll hold water.”
“Like what, Mama?”
“Anything, honey. Pots, pans, buckets, bowls… everything you can put water in, bring them outside and put them in the grass to help catch the rain.”
“What about the plastic tubs Beth’s toys are in?”
“Great idea. Yes. Dump out the toys and drag them outside too.”
She stuck out her tongue as she jotted notes for a full five minutes.
It was a habit she inherited from her mother, who did the same thing when she concentrated on something.
When she was done she proudly showed her work to her mother.
“My, you’re very thorough,” she said. Then she counted the more than twenty items Amy listed in her notes.
Everything from coffee cups to the cookie jar to empty water bottles. Anything and everything which could hold water was listed.
“I don’t know if the water bottles would be a good idea, honey.”
“But why not?”
“Well, they’d likely fall over and wouldn’t catch much water, honey. And you’ll need them to stay clean so you can put the purified water in them.”
“What purified water, Mama?”
“That’s the next lesson, honey. That’s what we’ll do after lunch.”
“Can I ask you one last question, Mama?”
“Sure, honey.”
“Instead of going through all this, why don’t we just drink the bottled water that’s in the basement? There must be a zillion bottles of it down there.”
“Well, we will drink that water, honey. But only when we have to. We’ll always drink purified rainwater first, but it won’t always be available. When it’s not, then we’ll drink the bottles.”
The little tyke seemed satisfied with that answer and trotted off to find something more fun to do.
Monica had a coughing fit and collapsed on the couch to rest.
Despite her heavy hacking and constant fatigue, though, she felt better than she had in days.
She had a deep feeling things would be okay.
If not for her, at least for her children.
Chapter 36
On the afternoon after they’d taken over the Speer house and claimed it as their own, Ronal
d found a rather odd contraption in the cupboard.
It was a large capacity plastic funnel that was lined with several layers of fabric.
“I wonder what the hell this is,” he said and almost threw it away.
“Don’t throw it out. I might need it,” Monica told him.
“You’re frickin’ nuts. What in the hell would you use this thing for?”
“There are several boxes of spaghetti noodles stashed in the upstairs walls. I can tear the fabric off of it and use it to drain spaghetti noodles.”
There were also twenty or thirty cans of spaghetti sauce in the basement food stores which were still in date.
And Ron liked spaghetti.
So he acquiesced.
The truth was, Monica was much smarter than Ronald was, even on her worst days and his best ones.
She knew immediately what the odd contraption was the instant she laid eyes upon it.
Sure, she could have told Ronald what it was.
But he’d take that as a knock against his intelligence, for he’d never admit she was better than him in the thinking department.
Or in any other way, for he considered his wife inferior to him.
Monica had learned that the best way to avoid a beating was to pacify Ronald. To compliment him for accomplishing even the simplest of things. To constantly stroke his ego.
And to never, ever make him feel she was smarter than he was.
Such a strategy didn’t work all the time, for Ronald was as unstable and unpredictable as any man she’d ever met. But it did diffuse the situation more often than not and save her from being abused.
The contraption was a device for straining rainwater before it was boiled and used as drinking water.
She knew there was one in the house somewhere when she first entered the house and looked out the back door to see the eight barrels lined up beneath the gutter.
For boiling water makes it safe to drink, yes. But it does nothing to prevent chunks of dirt, leaves and asphalt shingles which can recontaminate the water after it’s been boiled.
Anyone not named Ronald knew that rainwater had to be filtered to remove all the particles before boiling.
That was what the contraption was for.
Ronald relented that afternoon he’d found the funnel and placed it back in the cupboard.
Texas Bound: Alone: Book 11 Page 11