Through the Sheriff's Eyes

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Daddy had moved back upstairs to his room this week, and had called to have the rented hospital bed picked up. Getting up and down the stairs was hard for him, but there was no denying the comfort of being able to hear his snores right across the hall. Even so, she couldn’t sleep. It seemed every time she dropped off, electricity jolted her heart and brought her, gasping, awake. It was as if she’d set an internal alarm to save her from the nightmares waiting on the other side of the curtain of sleep, and she couldn’t figure out now how to turn it off.

  Or whether she dared turn it off.

  She lay stiff, trying to decide what time Ben would arrive and how long it would take her to pick some corn and peel the potatoes. Maybe she’d get up now and make a pumpkin pie, too. Not just for him; Daddy would like it, too. It might ease the sadness that aged him more and more every time she looked at him. He’d loved Mama’s pumpkin pie.

  Faith’s half hour of rest hadn’t energized her at all. She felt so weary, she thought of herself encased in rusting metal like the Tin Man. She might be losing weight, but her body was so heavy, she had to think about every step. Holding her head up required an effort.

  Nonetheless, she let herself out the back door, keeping the house between herself and the barn so Dad wouldn’t spot her. Picking out a pumpkin took only a minute; she left it on the doorstep and went to the field for a few ears of corn that didn’t look overripe.

  Scooping out pumpkin guts was mindless but satisfying, the smell sharp. After cutting the pumpkin into pieces and baking it, she reduced the pulp to a creamy texture with the help of the Cuisinart, then went to work adding all the sugar and spices.

  The pie was baking when Dad came in the back door and she saw by the clock that it was already five-thirty. His face was gray with fatigue, but it lightened when he took a sniff.

  “Pie?”

  “Ben’s never tasted one from scratch,” she said. “He got me to thinking about how long it’s been since I made one.” She kissed her father’s cheek. “Now why don’t you go lie down for a few minutes?”

  “I think I might.” He set the money bag on the counter. “I didn’t count.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll do it later. Or tomorrow.”

  He nodded and trudged on to the staircase. She all but held her breath as he climbed, laboriously moving the crutches, then hitching himself upward.

  What if he fell? He should still be sleeping downstairs, she thought with a clutch of guilt. She sank down wearily at the kitchen table. How many lives had been damaged because Rory wouldn’t let her go?

  Did he really love me that much?

  Something in her revolted at the idea. Whatever he’d felt, it wasn’t love. Obsession maybe. Faith cringed, as she had a thousand times, at the idea that she’d inspired an emotion so sick. Was something wrong with her, to have made her own twin flee from her and then her husband want to control and hurt her? It almost had to be her, didn’t it?

  She was so deep in her brooding she jumped when the timer went off. Dad had gone upstairs over half an hour ago! It was almost as if she’d blanked out. Shivering, Faith rose and lowered the oven temperature, then started mixing up biscuit dough. She had drop biscuits on a cookie sheet to go in the oven as soon as she took the pies out.

  She’d begun husking the corn when, through the kitchen window, she saw Ben’s SUV pull in and park beside her car. He wasn’t in his official vehicle. Nor, when he got out and slammed the door, was he wearing his uniform. He’d apparently gone home and changed into jeans and a dark green T-shirt that hugged his broad shoulders. He didn’t move immediately, instead gazing toward the house with an unreadable but somber expression on his face. After a moment he squeezed the back of his neck with one hand as if to relieve tension. Only then did he come toward the back door, his stride long and athletic.

  Despite everything, she responded to the mere sight of him. She made herself back away from the window, her heart pounding. He didn’t feel the same about her. He was here because he felt responsible for her. What she had to do was convince him that she was doing fine, and he’d go away.

  She needed him to go away. Faith didn’t want to feel anything right now, and especially not this longing that could mean nothing but more pain in the end.

  He rapped lightly on the glass pane of the back door and came in when he saw her, not waiting for more of an invitation. “Hope this is good timing.”

  “It’s fine. I’m letting Dad lie down for a bit before dinner.”

  He opened his mouth and then closed it. “Is that pumpkin pie I smell?”

  She went back to peeling the husks from the corn. “I thought I’d give a city boy a treat. And Dad, too. He seemed pleased.”

  Ben bent low to inhale the aroma of the pies cooling on the counter, then leaned one hip against the counter edge beside her. “I’m pleased, too,” he said, his voice low and somehow soft despite its craggy texture.

  She wished he wouldn’t stand so close. “Excuse me,” she said politely, and when he moved back she reached into an upper cupboard for a large bowl. Unfortunately, he resumed his spot the minute she closed the cupboard door and picked up a paring knife.

  “Can I do anything?” he asked.

  “Well…I suppose you could peel the potatoes, if you want.” Keeping him busy seemed like a good idea.

  She’d already set a small heap of Yukon Gold potatoes on the counter. Now she handed him a potato peeler and got out a cutting board. He washed his hands and went to work right beside her, which was almost more disconcerting than having him watch her. As she sliced corn from the cobs into the big bowl, she kept stealing sidelong glances at his strong brown forearms and the dark hair on them, at his wrists that had to be twice the thickness of hers, at hands so large and yet deft as he peeled and cut the potatoes into cubes.

  He had held her with those arms; she’d rested her cheek against his chest, and his big hands had moved over her so tenderly it made her heart ache to remember.

  Then don’t, she told herself harshly. You can’t afford to.

  By the time she measured water into a soup kettle and turned on the burner of the old gas range, then scraped the potatoes into it along with the celery, onion and green pepper she’d diced, Faith had squelched the unwelcome moment of weakness. It was worse to be held and then abandoned than it was not to have anyone to lean on in the first place.

  Ignoring him wasn’t easy, though, with those dark eyes watching her so damn thoughtfully, as if he was trying to read every flicker of her emotions. The sound of the timer gave her an excuse; first she took the biscuits out of the oven and then, as she added the corn and milk to the chowder, she sent Ben upstairs to wake Dad.

  “It takes him a while to make it downstairs.”

  “Stairs are a bitch with crutches,” Ben agreed.

  “You’ve been on them?” She was immediately mad at herself for asking.

  “I was wounded in the leg a few years back.” He didn’t move for a moment, his gaze resting on her face, but when she didn’t react he turned away and she heard him start upstairs.

  A shudder passed through her. Wounded. That sounded as if he’d been knifed or shot, not injured in a car accident or something normal. She shouldn’t be surprised. He must be nearly forty, which meant he’d been a cop for many years. He’d implied, if not said, that he knew what it was like to kill someone.

  Dad had been drafted and sent to Vietnam, but his skill at keeping tractors and farm combines running meant he’d spent his enlistment working as a mechanic, not patrolling or fighting. Faith knew a couple of guys her age who’d been in Iraq, but had no idea whether they’d been in combat, never mind actually killed anyone. It was an awkward question to ask someone. Would it even help to find out what other people felt? And it had to be different when the person you shot to death was someone you knew. Someone you’d once believed you loved. And when you were face-to-face and saw the moment of death in his eyes.

  She closed her eyes tight and held herself ver
y still. Don’t think about it, she told herself desperately. It had become her mantra. Don’t think about it.

  Ben was making himself available. He wanted her to talk to him. Faith thought, at least, that he’d be honest with her.

  But her anxiety at the idea was so great, she heard herself gasping for breath as she clung to the handle on the refrigerator door. She couldn’t talk about it again! She just couldn’t.

  I can think about it later. Maybe a week from now, or a month from now, or six months from now, she’d want to talk to somebody. But she wasn’t ready yet, and nobody could make her do anything she didn’t want to.

  The anxiety eased enough for her to remember that she was supposed to be getting the whipping cream out of the refrigerator to add to the chowder. Oh—and butter, for the table.

  It was Ben who was making her so tense. Once she fed him, he’d go home and leave her in peace, at least for another day or two. Maybe longer than that, if she could convince him she really was fine.

  Her chest squeezed with pain, and Faith had to wonder if she would ever really be fine again.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  IT RAINED on Halloween. In fact, the skies had opened the Saturday before and never closed again. Faith had counted on sales for the week being the highest of the year. But Mr. Barth declined to bring his wagon or Clydesdales over to get drenched and slosh through the mud for the few brave families who decided to visit a pumpkin field in the rain. Nobody wanted to go through the maze. If people were buying pumpkins that week, it was from the covered areas in front of Safeway and Thriftway. On one memorable day that week, not a single car had pulled into the farm. Marsha just shook her head when Faith asked how the day had gone. On All Hallow’s Eve, Faith didn’t even light the dozen jack-o’-lanterns clustered outside the barn doors.

  The evening was quiet, the windows pelted with heavy rain as she—and Dad, too, probably—pretended to watch TV. She felt the weight of his gaze, and kept her face wooden. She knew what he was thinking. Knew it. The receipts this month didn’t even justify paying Marsha’s part-time wages, much less Char taking so much time away from her highly paid software designing job.

  Panic beating in her chest like great black crow’s wings, Faith stared blindly at the television screen.

  We could be open just weekends.

  But that new produce stand had opened in town, on the corner near the farm co-op. It was more conveniently placed for locals. And there were now two antiques stores in town. They probably wouldn’t make it; small businesses usually didn’t. But in the meantime, they would suck more customers away from the Russell Family Farm. Halloween was one thing the farm did really, really well, and this year was a bomb. Even last week, before the rain began, she’d noticed a big drop-off in families wanting to go through the maze or browse the pumpkin patch. The barn had been busy enough with nosy people, but the genuine customers had quit coming. Real bloodshed and tragedy detracted from the atmosphere of family fun she had promoted. Even at school or the grocery store, some people stared at her, but Faith hadn’t been able to help noticing that others—sometimes people she’d known for years—didn’t want to meet her eyes.

  The business wasn’t enough to keep the farm alive. And Dad hated it anyway. She knew he did. She was the only reason he hadn’t given up and sold the farm two years ago.

  He was watching her again, the bags under his eyes and his expression making her think of a basset hound. Her fingernails bit into her palms. She should say something. They ought to talk about it. But Faith felt as if someone was ripping her heart out of her chest. It was stupid to let a piece of land mean so much to her; a ramshackle farmhouse, a cluster of aging outbuildings, even if it had all belonged to her grandparents before her parents, even if this was where she’d grown up, where she…belonged.

  Just as it was stupid to have this terrible fear that she would tumble off the edge of the world if she didn’t have the farm to cling to, her fingernails digging into the river delta soil.

  She was having trouble breathing, but she couldn’t let her father see. Jumping to her feet, Faith said, “I’m going to clean up the kitchen and read for a while, Dad. I’d better do a load of laundry, too.” She kissed his grizzled cheek and hurried out of the living room before she crumpled.

  Of course, she couldn’t do that in the kitchen, either. He’d hear her, or walk in on her. And if she went up to her room and cried in bed he’d wonder why she hadn’t loaded the dishwasher and wiped down the counters. So she’d have to do that before she could break down.

  But by the time the kitchen was spotless and she’d gone upstairs to collect dirty clothes to start a load, she was almost numb again. No breakdown tonight, she thought dully. It was better this way.

  Dad’s hesitant footsteps stopped behind her just as she started the washer.

  “Faith?”

  Anguish rushed back, flooding her chest until her ribs all but creaked. Not now. Please, please, Daddy. Not now.

  “You’re going up to bed?” she heard herself say brightly, not turning. She measured laundry soap out and dumped it in. “I grabbed the clothes from your hamper, too.”

  After a moment he said, “All right, Faith.” Resignation weighted his voice. “I guess I will go up. Don’t stay up too late.”

  “Of course not,” she assured him, her cheer as real as the bright red tomatoes at the grocery store, the ones that might as well be made out of plastic for all the taste they had.

  Once again, she listened as he made his slow, awkward way upstairs. He clumped to the bathroom, then back to his bedroom. He didn’t shut the door. He never did anymore. Neither of them did, as if they had to hear each other breathing at night to feel safe.

  Then why don’t I? she wondered. Why do I only feel safe when Ben is near? Hadn’t her daddy always been there for her? But it seemed to her that he could only keep the little girl safe, not the woman she was now. He hadn’t been able to save his wife, or the farm; he hadn’t been able to do anything to at all to protect Faith from her monster of a husband.

  And that was her fault, too, of course, because she’d never told her father that Rory hurt her.

  Silence settled upstairs and she stood gripping the sides of the washing machine and staring at the rainy night through the window Rory had come through. Faith didn’t even know when the glass had been replaced. Probably Ben or Gray had arranged it the day after.

  The blur wasn’t all rain on the windowpane; tears had begun to fall, and Faith couldn’t seem to stop them.

  It was all over. Everything was over. There was no point in even opening tomorrow. No—there was. They’d want to sell as much of their inventory as possible. They could start with a twenty-five percent discount, then go to fifty percent, then higher. An auction would take care of the farm equipment.

  The unsold pumpkins could rot; the fields would never be plowed again. They would be bulldozed. The house and the hundred-year-old barn, too. She could see it now, the earth stripped raw, an asphalt road with curbs and sidewalks winding through land that had once been a farm. Small stakes topped with bright plastic flags would mark the boundaries of lots where houses would be built cheek by jowl. Or maybe even apartment complexes, like that development on Woods Creek over behind Safeway.

  Her decision was abrupt. She’d cover up the maze sign out on the highway. Tonight, just in case the rain let up before morning and someone wanted to try it out. And the sign that said Fresh Organic Produce, too, because there wouldn’t be any more.

  She couldn’t remember where they’d stowed the piece of plywood that had covered the maze sign until the corn had grown high enough. Maybe she could cover both temporarily with black plastic garbage bags. They always kept a box of them here in the utility room.

  But she couldn’t find it, her search increasingly frantic, her frustration rising until she choked on it. She wouldn’t wait until morning. She wouldn’t!

  Finally, she discovered the box fallen behind the dryer, empty. Her throat clo
sed.

  Well then, she’d take down the sign. They’d always kept an ax and a saw in the covered woodbox behind the house, next to the back steps.

  Faith didn’t bother with a raincoat or boots. Who cared if she got wet? She had the presence of mind, but just barely, to carry a flashlight so she could find the saw. The lid to the woodbox slipped from her wet hands and thumped back down, but she couldn’t imagine Daddy would hear it, not with his bedroom on the other side of the house.

  The narrow yellow beam of the flashlight led her across the wet grass to the highway. There wasn’t any traffic. Probably no one had gone out tonight. Ben would be relieved; he’d been so worried about trick-or-treaters and about teenagers out pulling pranks. All of them would have stayed home safe and warm and dry instead, Ben included. She was pathetic, out here in the dark and cold rain, sobbing as she fell to her knees beside the sign, planted on two sturdy 4x4s buried deep in the earth.

  Faith sawed until her arms ached. The serrated blade kept binding in the wood until she screamed with rage. Finally, once she’d gotten far enough through both uprights, she threw herself at the sign and felt the wood crack as the whole thing fell, her with it.

  She lay, half stunned, atop the sign, until she could make herself push to her knees, then her feet. She dragged the sign and uprights behind her and dropped it beside the back steps, then went back and attacked the fresh-organic-produce sign in turn. Her arms and back ached, but she couldn’t let herself stop until this sign, too, toppled. It was all she could do to get it to the back steps. She almost wept anew to realize she’d forgotten the saw, but she made herself go back for it and restore it to its place in the woodbox. As if it mattered whether it rusted in the rain. Most of the tools would go in the estate sale they’d hold before moving.

  Faith was shaking by now, so cold she couldn’t feel her feet. She let herself in the back door and stood dripping inside, shivering and rocking in place. Blood soaked one arm of her shirt, she noticed, as if it had nothing to do with her. She’d probably torn her skin on a nail. Which didn’t matter—she’d had a tetanus shot not that long ago, when she’d stepped on a nail when she was hunting for something in the back shed.