Chapter Twenty-three
“Twenty-four stitches in a perfectly straight line,” the ER doc said, admiring her handiwork.
“Lovely,” I groused. Lidocaine or not, my slashed arm hurt. “Maybe you should take up embroidery. I hear it’s relaxing.”
“Knitting.”
“What?”
“It’s knitting that’s supposed to be relaxing, Lena, not embroidery.”
“Hmph.”
On an ER-humor roll, Dr. Margaret Mannon called over to the other ER doc who was working on Mother Eve. “Hey, Jeff. Isn’t Ms. Jones here ready for her Frequent Flyer discount?”
“She’s still got one shotgun wound to go before she qualifies,” Dr. Jeff answered.
Unamused, I sat up and looked across the blood-spattered room toward Sergeant Sylvie Perrins, standing next to Dr. Jeff. Sylvie was gloating down at Mother Eve, whose right wrist was currently attached to the gurney via a shiny pair of handcuffs. Sylvie loved arresting people.
“I called Jimmy and he’s on his way,” she informed me. “Figured you couldn’t drive like that, your Jeep being a stick and all.”
“You think she’s good for it?”
“Huh?” Sylvie looked puzzled. “Who’s good for what?”
“Mother Eve. Good for the deaths of Megan Unruh, and Ford and Doreen Laumenthal?”
Sylvie put a finger up to her lips. “Shh. Baby’s trying to sleep.”
Mother Eve muttered something, but it was unclear because she’d obviously been given twice the amount of painkillers I had. Once she drifted back to sleep, Sylvie answered, “Well, we’re still working on that. But I’m hoping she is.”
I also wanted to believe that Mother Eve—a.k.a. Priscilla Marie Heywood Stahl—was our killer. After all, she had a long criminal background and tonight had attempted to kill me. But something about it didn’t feel right.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Jimmy said when he caught me heading for the corral the next morning, my left arm swathed in bandages.
One of Jimmy’s faults—although they weren’t many—was that he tended to hover. In the past, whenever I’d been hospitalized with a workplace injury, gunshot or stabbing, he’d stayed by my hospital bed until the nurses threw him out. And that was when we were just friends and business partners. Since we’d moved beyond mere friendship, I foresaw a life of being hovered over, and I didn’t know how I felt about that. Comforted? Suffocated?
“Exercise is good for me,” I told him, grabbing the saddle horn. “Besides, Adila looks lonely.”
He put his hand on top of mine. “How much blood did you lose last night?”
“I bled worse when I got my ears pierced.”
“I’m not going to let you lift that saddle.”
“I can always ride bareback.”
“Not on that horse, you won’t.”
After comparing the value of total independence to sensible health precautions, I slipped my hand out from under his. “Then saddle ’er up, Pardner.”
He was still grinning when we rode toward the rising sun.
As October in the desert tends to be, the morning was flawless. The summer heat had long disappeared, and the winter rains lay months in the future. The only thing lacking was color, which we wouldn’t see until spring, when the various species of cacti blossomed—red, pink, orange, and on the stately saguaros, startling snow-white with bright yellow centers. But you can’t have everything, can you? I contented myself with the muted greens of sage and the soft golden glow of the caliche soil, relishing the fact that the desert’s subtle beauty helped me ignore the ache in my stitched forearm.
“…and so I told him there was nothing we could do about it.” Jimmy’s voice intruded upon my sylvan reverie.
“Huh?”
“You didn’t hear a word I said, did you, Lena?”
“I, ah, caught the part about there being nothing we could do about it.”
“You agree, don’t you?”
Ahead of us, a covey of top-knotted Gambel’s quail scattered out of the horses’ way, seeking shelter under a creosote bush.
“I always do, don’t I?”
There was silence for a moment, broken only by the sound of the horses’ hooves, the singing of a cactus wren. Then Jimmy rode up beside me, a rare expression of irritation on his face. “Did you hear the part about him wanting you to call him?”
Time for the truth. “Okay, okay. I wasn’t paying attention. What am I supposed to agree with and who wants me to call him, and why?”
The irritation softened into concern. “Is your arm hurting? Do you need to go back to the Emergency Room?”
“I’m fine, but I repeat, who am I supposed to call?”
Jimmy studied me carefully, then seeing no evidence of pain on my features—I’m careful about that sort of thing—he relaxed. “Harold Slow Horse. He’s not taking the news about Chelsea very well.”
I frowned. “What news?”
“About her marriage.”
“Her what!?”
He reined Big Boy in front of Adila, bringing her to a halt. “How long have you not been listening to me?”
In the ensuing silence, Adila took the opportunity to nip Big Boy on the neck. He squealed and nipped back. Adila responded in kind, and next thing you know, we were in the middle of a horse brawl, not the kind of fight you want to get involved in on a nice October morning. At least bringing the horses’ back under control gave me time to collect my thoughts.
When the two animals finally settled down, I said, “I’m sorry I wasn’t listening, but I was, ah, thinking about something else.” Like how much my arm hurt. “So tell me. What’s all this about Chelsea getting married?”
“In a candlelight service last night, apparently. Right afterwards, she called Harold to give him the news, told him he should be happy for her, and to top it off, emailed him a picture of her arm in arm with New Hubby.”
“I bet that went over well.”
“Like the sinking of the Titanic.”
“So what does Harold want from me now?”
“The name of a good lawyer.”
“Why?”
“He wants to sue New Hubby for alienation of affection.”
Wincing, and not from physical pain, I asked, “What’s New Hubby’s name? And where the hell did she meet him? She’s been up at Kanati for over a month, so…” I stopped. “Oh, hell. She married someone from there, didn’t she? Please tell me it wasn’t Roger Gorsky!”
“His name is Adam, and here’s his picture. Somewhere in his forties, it looks like. Kind of handsome in a way, if you go for skinny blond men.” With a wicked grin, he leaned over and handed me his cell phone so I could see.
Chelsea in a bridal veil.
And then it all came back.
I was four years old and it was my wedding day.
Of all the little girls among The Children of Abraham, Golden Boy had chosen me for his bride. Everyone said it was a great honor, but if it was, why was Mom crying? And why was Daddy so angry it took two men to hold him back?
As Mom ran to Abraham’s tent to tell him that I was too young, two of the older women, one fat, one skinny, dressed me in a white dress—so much lace!—and covered my face with a white veil that made everything look foggy.
“Beautiful clothes for a beautiful bride,” the fat one said.
“But I can’t see the world anymore!”
“From now on Adam will do the seeing for you.”
“Nobody can see the world for someone else. We’ve each gotta see it for ourselfs.”
She frowned. “Who told you that?”
“My mom.”
The two women looked at each other. “Helen, again,” Sister Skinny said. “She’s nothing but trouble. I told Abraham he was making a mistake with her.”
Sister Fat made an ugly sound. “Abraham never makes mistakes.”
Sister Skinny blushed. “Oh, that’s not what I meant. Of course he doesn’t. It’s just that his ways are like God’s, sometimes difficult to understand.” Then she turned to me, lifted my veil so she could look me in the face, and said, “Your mother was wrong.”
I wanted to say my mom was never wrong, but I remembered her last night, crying and crying, and saying she’d been so wrong, so wrong.
Deciding I didn’t want to get married, I grabbed the veil away from Sister Skinny and threw it to the ground. Then I started to take off the white dress. It didn’t feel pretty anymore. But when I tried to walk out of the tent, Sister Fat grabbed me and slapped me in the face. “You’ll do as you’re told, Little Miss Snot.”
They dressed me again. I wanted to cry because my face hurt, but I didn’t want them to know anything about me, how I was feeling, how scared I was of the way Golden Boy looked at me, how everything was getting so awful that Mom cried all the time, how Daddy wanted us to leave, how…
“She’s ready,” Sister Skinny said.
“About time, too,” Sister Fat muttered.
I tried to escape again, but it didn’t work. They just grabbed me and dragged me out of the tent to the clearing where Abraham and Golden Boy and the others were waiting. My mom was there, too. A couple of big men stood next to her, almost as if they were guarding her, which was silly. Mom didn’t need to be guarded. She could take care of herself. At least that’s what she always told Daddy.
I looked around for Daddy, but he wasn’t there, just Mom, who kept yelling, “No, no! No, no!” until Sister Fat leaned over and slapped her like she’d slapped me.
“That was mean!” I yelled, running over and slapping Sister Fat on her big fat butt with both of my hands. She reared around and raised her hand to me and…
“Stop it!” Golden Boy commanded. “If you touch her I will have you killed.”
Sister Fat put her hand down.
“That’s stupid,” I told him. “You can’t go around killing people even if they are slappers.”
He gave me a startled look, then began to laugh.
An hour later, after Abraham said some fancy words about a whole lot of things, Golden Boy and me were married.
Looking back, I don’t think I had a wedding night. At least, I can’t remember one, because after that day, everything changed.
Everything.