Come Sundown

by Nora Roberts

  bitchy with each other or even some tussles at an event. But something like this? I can’t get it straight in my head.”

  “Bo? Sorry.” Rory came to the door. “Mom needs a minute if you’ve got it.”

  “Sure. I’ll be right there. Jessie, maybe you can just use my desk, go over those statements. That’ll be something done.” Bodine brought them up on the computer, rose. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Jessica took the desk chair, read over the statements. Straightforward, but maybe just a little too brisk, maybe just a little forced.

  She shifted to the keyboard, began to type suggestions.

  “Bo, I want to…” Already halfway across the office, Chase stopped. “I thought it was Bo.”

  “She had to step out a minute.” Jessica rose. “Chase, I’m so sorry.”

  “Appreciate it.” He took off his hat, held it in his hands. “I’ll get out of the way, let you eat your lunch.”

  “It’s not mine. I had to, apparently, channel Miss Fancy and get Bodine to eat something. She’ll be right back. Why don’t you sit down? I’ll get you some coffee.”

  “I’m coffee’d out. Never thought to hear myself say that.” But he did sit, a bit heavily. “Ah, is she holding up all right? Bodine?”

  He looked tired, even a little pale, she thought, and realized she’d never seen him look either before. Jessica came around the desk, took the other guest chair. “You look tired—and don’t appreciate me pointing it out. But Bodine looks exhausted.”

  “She’ll need to run everything,” he stated. “Plan everything, talk to everybody.”

  “She will, and is. Still, I think working is getting her through the first hard shock, but the fact is, everybody’s leaning on her. She looks pale and worn down, and hasn’t had time to grieve herself, or even come to terms.”

  He said nothing for a moment, just stared down at his hat.

  More than pale and tired, she thought. He looked unspeakably sad. “Have you eaten?”

  “What?”

  “Apparently I’m pushing the soup today. I can order some for you.”

  “No, I…” He simply stared at her for a very long beat. “I’m good. I … I gave Bo a hard time about you.”

  “About … me?”

  “When she said she was going to ask you to help out with the statements and all that.”

  Absorbing that, Jessica pushed at a pin, though it hadn’t been loose, in the smooth coil at the back of her neck. “Because I’m not from here.”

  “Not from here, haven’t been here long, and…”

  “And?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I came to apologize to her. She was hurting, and I could see it, but I took a little swipe anyway. Because I was mad.” He scowled down at his hat again. “Just mad. Still am.”

  “Is this how you look mad?”

  “Depends.” He glanced up. “On what I’m mad about. Bo thinks you’re the one to go to for this, then I’ve got no reason to say otherwise.”

  Jessica nodded, crossed her high-heeled feet at the ankles. “Since you opened the door … What’s your problem with me? We both know you have one.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it just takes me time to get used to people.”

  “People like me?”

  “People altogether.” He hesitated a moment, then shrugged. “There’s a good reason I work the ranch and Rory works the resort. I’d go crazy dealing with people all damn day.”

  “Well, if you figure out the problem with me is more than me being human, let me know. Maybe we can work it out. I’ll go let Bo know you’re waiting.”

  Chase cleared his throat as she started out of the office. “Do I have to apologize to you, too?”

  She turned her head, skewered him with a look. “Depends,” she said, and left.

  PART TWO

  A Purpose

  Hold to the now, the here, through which

  all future plunges to the past.

  —James Joyce

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  — 1995 —

  Alice—her name was Alice whatever he called her—gave birth to a son.

  He was her third child, and the only one Sir allowed her to keep. The second baby, another girl, had been born only ten months after the first. A little girl she’d named Fancy because she’d come with a pretty down of red hair.

  When he’d taken her baby away, her second daughter away, up those stairs, she refused to eat or drink for nearly a week, even when he beat her. She tried to choke herself with the bedsheet, but had only passed out.

  He’d forced food into her, and feeling her own body crave it, she died a little. He gave her three weeks after childbirth before raping her again. Within six, she conceived a son.

  The birth of the boy she named Rory for the father she’d never known changed things. Sir wept, laid a kiss on the baby’s head as it squalled and wailed. He brought her flowers—the purple pasqueflower that bloomed in April all around the ranch.

  They said home, and had the rusty knife of hope carving into her.

  Was she still home?

  He didn’t come to take the baby away, instead brought her milk, fresh vegetables, even a steak. To keep her milk strong and healthy, he said.

  He stocked her with diapers and wipes and baby lotion, a plastic tub and baby wash. When she asked—carefully—if she could have softer towels for the baby, he provided them, and a windup mobile, of animals and an arc, that played a lullaby.

  For months he didn’t strike her or force himself on her. The baby was her salvation, sparing her from beatings and rapes, giving her a reason to live.

  Emboldening her to ask for more.

  He came to see the baby, bring her food, three times a day. The midday meal had been an addition after Rory was born. She’d come to gauge the time of day by his visits.

  Preparing for the breakfast visit, she nursed the baby, washed him, dressed him. He’d taken his first steps only the night before, and she’d wept with pride.

  A new hope burned in her. Sir would see his son walk the first time, would allow them to go upstairs, allow her to take the baby outside, to walk in the sun.

  And she would see the lay of the land. She would begin to plan how to take her child and run.

  Her child, her precious boy, her salvation and joy, would not grow up in a cellar.

  She washed herself, brushed her hair that was now nut brown and past her shoulders.

  When he came down the stairs with a plate of runny eggs and a couple of overdone slices of bacon, she sat in her chair, bouncing the baby on her lap.

  “Thank you, Sir.”

  “See that you eat all of it. Waste not, want not.”

  “I will. I promise, but I have a surprise for you.” She stood Rory on his sweet, chubby legs, kissed the top of his head. He clutched her fingers for a moment, then let go and took four wobbling steps before he sat on his butt.

  “He can walk,” Sir said quietly.

  “I think he may be walking early, but he’s just so smart and sweet.” She held her breath when Sir went to Rory, stood him up again.

  And Rory, hands waving, giggled as he toddled across the floor.

  “He’ll be running before you know it,” she said, pushing cheer into her voice. “Boys need to run. It’d be good for him to have more room—when you think it’s right,” she said quickly when Sir turned those dark, hard eyes on her. “To get some sun. There’s—there’s vitamins in sunlight.”

  He said nothing, but bent and picked up the baby. Rory tugged at the scraggly beard Sir had grown during the last months.

  It killed her, every time he touched the baby. She had a knot of terror and despair tight in her belly. But she made herself smile as she rose.

  “I’ll share breakfast with him. He likes eggs.”

  “It’s your job to give him mother’s milk.”

  “Oh, yes, and I do, but he likes solid food, too. Just little bits. He’s got five teeth and another coming in. Sir? I’m remembering wh
at my own mother said about fresh air, and how you need it to stay healthy, grow strong. If we could go outside, get that fresh air, even for a few minutes.”

  His face as he held the baby turned to stone. “What’d I tell you about that?”

  “Yes, Sir. I’m just trying to be a good mother to … our son. The fresh air’s good for him, and for my milk.”

  “You eat that food. He’s got more teeth coming in, I’ll get him something to gnaw on. Do as I say, Esther, or I’ll have to remind you of your place.”

  She ate, said nothing more, told herself to wait a week. A full week before she asked again.

  But in three days, after she’d eaten the evening meal, nursed the baby, he came down the steps again.

  And stunned her by showing her the key to her leg shackle.

  “You heed what I say now. I’m going to take you out the house, ten minutes, and not a second more.”

  She quivered as that rusty knife of hope slashed jagged through her heart.

  “You try yelling, I’ll break your teeth. You stand up.”

  Docile, head down so he wouldn’t see that flicker of hope in her eyes, she rose. The hope died when he looped a rope around her neck.

  “Please, don’t. The baby.”

  “You shut your mouth. You try to run, I’ll snap your neck. You do just as I say, and it may be I’ll let you go out for that fresh air once a week. You don’t obey me, I’ll beat you bloody.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Her heart shook in her chest when he fit the key into the lock and, for the first time in four years, the weight of the irons dropped from her ankle.

  She made a soft, throaty sound, an animal in pain as she saw the raw, red, circling scar above her foot.

  His eyes were bright black moons. “I’m giving you a gift, Esther. Don’t make me sorry for it.”

  When he shoved her forward, she took her first step without the shackle, then another, her gait uneven, a kind of shambling limp.

  She held Rory close, struggled her way up the stairs.

  Run? she thought as her shaking heart grew heavy. She could barely walk.

  He tugged the noose tight at the top of the stairs. “You heed me, Esther.”

  He opened the door.

  She saw a kitchen with a yellowing floor, a wall-hung cast-iron sink with dishes stacked in a drainer beside it. A refrigerator no taller than she was, and a two-burner stove.

  It smelled of grease.

  But there was a window over the sink, and through it she saw the last dying lights of the day. The world. She saw the world.

  Trees. Sky.

  She tried to pay attention, take a picture with her mind. The old couch, a single table and lamp, a TV like she’d seen in photographs—a kind of box with … rabbit ears, she remembered.

  Wood floor, empty walls, log walls, and a small, empty fireplace made out of mismatched brick.

  He nudged her toward the door.

  So many locks, she thought. Why would he need so many locks?

  He opened them, one by one.

  Everything—her plans, her hopes, her pain, her fear—fell away as she stepped outside on the short, sagging porch.

  The light, oh, the light. Just the hint of the setting sun sliding behind the mountains. Just a hint of red against the peaks.

  The smell of pine and earth, the feel of air moving over her face. Warm, summer air.

  Trees surrounded her with a scraped-up patch of ground where vegetables grew. She saw the old truck—the same one she’d so foolishly climbed into—an old washing machine, a tiller, a locked cattle gate with barbed wire forming a toothy fence around what she could see of the cabin.

  She started to step off the porch, lost in wonder, but Sir yanked her back.

  “This is far enough. Air here’s just like out there.”

  She lifted her face as tears of stunned joy rolled down her cheeks. “Oh, the stars are coming out. Look, Rory, look, my baby. Look at the stars.”

  She tried to tip the baby’s head up with her finger, but he only grabbed on to it, tried to gnaw.

  It made her laugh, kiss the top of his head.

  “Listen, listen. Do you hear the owl? Do you hear the breeze going through the trees? Isn’t it beautiful? It’s all so beautiful.”

  As he babbled and gnawed, Alice tried to see everything at once, absorb everything.

  “That’s enough. Go back in.”

  “Oh, but—”

  The rope dug into her throat. “I said ten minutes, no more.”

  Once a week, she remembered. He’d said once a week, too. She went inside without a sound, and this time saw the shotgun on a rack over the empty fireplace.

  Was it loaded?

  One day, please God, one day she’d try to find out.

  She limped back down the steps, amazed the ten minutes had both exhilarated and exhausted her.

  “Thank you, Sir.” She didn’t think—couldn’t think—of what it meant that the humble words didn’t burn her throat as they once had. “Rory’s going to sleep better tonight for getting that fresh air. Look there, his eyes are drooping already.”

  “Put him in his bed.”

  “I should feed and change him first.”

  “Put him in his bed. He wakes up, then you do that.”

  She settled him down. He barely fussed at all, and quieted when she rubbed gentle circles on his back. “See that? See how good that was for him?”

  Once again, she kept her head down. “Did I do everything you told me?”

  “You did.”

  “Can we really go outside once a week?”

  “We’ll see about it, if you keep doing as I say. If you show me you’re thankful for what I give you.”

  “I will.”

  “Show me you’re thankful now.”

  Keeping her head lowered, she closed her eyes tight.

  “You’ve had more’n enough time to heal up after birthing the boy. And he’s eating solids so he don’t need your milk the same as he did. It’s time you do your wifely duties.”

  Saying nothing she walked to the cot, pulled the baggy dress over her head, lay down.