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Dr. Lawrence visited three patients in one trip. Miss Jacqui was obstinate, her usual. Hobo Joe made incredible progress. He felt confident they would fully heal ahead of schedule. However, Cordelia Muggs was weaker than before. He couldn’t tell if it was her sedatives or her grief. She was not herself.
He handed Joe a prescription and told him when to give it to Cordelia. The doctor then led the wandering Cordelia back up to her bedroom and tucked her in bed. Miss Jacqui spread gossip magazines on her nightstand. Dr. Lawrence eyed them skeptically.
“I know they’re junk. But they’re a distraction,” Miss Jacqui explained and cracked Cordelia’s bedroom curtains open. “A little sun will help.”
Dr. Lawrence knew better than to argue with the matriarch of the crafter circle. He let her alone, as she served her neighbor as best as she could.
Muffin coiled at Cordelia’s feet and whined at his mistress. He mourned alongside Cordelia and refused to leave her unattended.
“Joe and I will set up rounds. He’ll take the night, and I’ll take the day. We’ll get Lydia to help when she can, and Kat said she’d try to stop by later.”
The doctor nodded and left his patients, confident they were in good hands, each other’s.
✽✽✽
Ivy had pulled blackout curtains tight. When Lydia opened the door, the sunlight flooded the room and dazzled her. She shielded her eyes with her hands and pulled on Lydia, guiding her to the kitchen, where they always had their best talks.
“Is she okay?”
“Emily?” Lydia said dropping her heavy purse onto the countertop.
“Who else?” Ivy rocked in place as if soothing Scout.
“She will be.” Lydia detailed what she could for Ivy but left out anything told to her in confidence. Smart Ivy realized Lydia was withholding but knew that was the price of having the Sheriff’s wife acting like a surrogate mother. Sometimes she wouldn’t be able to tell her everything. Ivy retreated to bed, with Scout, an hour later.
Lydia was too tired to move. She wanted to shower. In the shower, Lydia could cry without disturbing anyone. She needed a good wild cry. Spying dishes in the sink, she seized the opportunity. Lydia loaded the dishwasher and started it. Then sinking to the floor in front of the grinding and steaming machine, she pulled her knees to her chest and wept.
“This is too much!” She shouted into her hands. “Too much, Lord. I'm not equipped for this. I’m just a housewife and mom. I was attacked and watched people die in front of me. Now, a terrified little girl is begging for my help, and I can do nothing. It’s too heavy. I can’t. I just want to sit here and be still with You.” Lydia rioted against destiny.
Her wounds were raw. Since the last battle, there wasn't any time to recover and recenter. The bruises were faded, but the memories bled into her daily habits. Her friends seemed to have no issue, moving on. However, Lydia did. She wanted to gather her chicks and her husband and bunker down.
Her heart ached, all the more for Joan. She hadn’t told her daughter about the attack she’d endured. There was nothing the girl could do, all the way in Africa. She hadn’t spoken with her since the incident. She didn’t want her voice to break and reveal all her trauma.
Joan was busy doing God’s most significant work, restoring lives and redeeming generations. Lydia didn’t want to worry about her crazy mother to invade Joan’s activities. Until Lydia could control her feelings, emails would be their only communicative outlet.
Lydia wanted her entire family together. Ethan, Joan, Ivy and Scout, she wanted them around her and the rest of the world far away. The world kept invading her nest. It pecked at her babies. It wore down her husband and hoisted more baggage onto Lydia’s shoulders.
Her fit continued until she had no more air. Tears stuck to her cheek and sweat weaved through her hair. Lydia sat on the cold tile waiting for an answer from God.
✽✽✽
Joe and Jacqui debriefed on the Muggs’ front lawn before they switched places. Neighbors had left baskets of red, white, and blue carnations on Cordelia’s lawn. Some stabbed miniature American Flags into the soil to honor the widow and her husband.
“I didn’t know Mario was a veteran.” Miss Jacqui was shocked at the revelation.
Jacqui thought she knew everything about her neighbors. She knew which neighbors drank too much and was aware of the two neighbors involved in affairs on her block. She prayed for them when they snuck home at night. Also, she cataloged every ailment on the street.
Three neighbors received deliveries of anti-anxiety pills. She knew this by the packaging. It matched Rene’s. She knew which church each neighbor attended and which house was home to the block’s atheist.
She knew the instant Mario went missing and what he’d been wearing when he disappeared. She remembered Cordelia’s face when she came asking for help when Mario hadn’t come home. Victor Cotton volunteered immediately to help in the search. Even though, at the time, he was suffering from severe migraines, as his prescription deliveries suggested.
The news of Mario’s past career took her aback. Joe watched, amused, as the woman recalibrated before walking back home. It tickled him that he had known something before she had. She whispered to herself as she entered her house and locked her front door.
Joe waited until Jacqui signaled him with a wave from her front window, before going inside. The lawn decorations made him ache for his memorial garden. He hoped no one was there, needing his help, while he sat inside the Muggs’ house sheltered and warm.
✽✽✽
Braden broiled with fury. No way was he going down for something as stupid as trash can smashing. Lucas might have to be the fall guy. The thought sent him a fleeting spark of remorse, but Lucas knew what he was doing, and he knew the risks.
Then there was Emily. She was weak. Too needy to be useful and too spongy to be a scapegoat. Pressure was all she required. Enough fear and she’d shut her trap. He did not doubt that. Emily loved Lucas and Lucas owed him. Braden had her where he wanted her. Emily was trapped. She wasn’t leaving Lucas, and he controlled Lucas.
Braden felt bad for the kid. However, he’d make it up to him tonight. He’d take him out for a good time — one last great memory before turning him over to the Sheriff. Lucas’ father could afford a good attorney. Braden’s mom couldn’t pay for bail. Betraying Lucas would be easy.
The inner struggle ended before it started. Braden laughed as he emptied his bladder into the floral arrangements. Then he let loose on the flags. Lucas watched him, his back to the front door.
Lucas’ jaw dropped, and a squeamish squeak escaped. “What is it, you moron? Afraid Mr. Muggs’ ghost is going to come after us?” Lucas shook his head seconds before the first blow landed on Braden’s skull.
✽✽✽
“He was missing a finger,” Flora repeated. Kat’s mouth remained slack. “On his left hand. Kevin told me about it the night they found the body. He said the trash can smashers scattered the man’s body onto the street and that his left hand was missing a finger.”
“Gross.”
Flora and Kat shuddered in unison. Each created a mental image and shoved it aside, so they could continue enjoying breakfast.
Kat and her children made oatmeal for the Brandes’ and served it with brown sugar, dried fruit, and almonds. The children turned up their noses but drained their bowls quickly. There were things to do. All five were now downstairs enjoying a game of make-believe. None heard of the finger. Kat swallowed her porridge, tried to ignore the fingernail shape and crunch of an almond.
✽✽✽
Lydia pushed past her nerves and replayed her conversation with Emily. She had a solid thirty minutes to think without distraction. Ivy was running with Ethan and Scout.
Armed with a legal pad and her favorite felt-tipped pens she made a mind map of her conversation. Unable to confide in Ethan, journaling her thoughts was the next best step. She prayed for guidance and understanding.
Emily needed help. Quick help. Lydia needed to catch up with current events. She wrote Emily’s name inside a circle on the center of her page. Lines, like a spider's legs, shot from the girl’s name as Lydia brainstormed.
According to the troubled girl, Emily knew Lucas from church. She watched him at Youth Group and studied him from a distance. All the girls wanted him to be theirs. He was the most handsome boy in the High School group, by far. Emily remembered Lucas at summer camp the year before. He and his best friend Braden led devotionals by the campfire. They taught the younger boys how to whittle and how to play a 3-chord praise song on guitar. He was a good boy and growing into a good man.
One day, during a free swim in the lake, Emily’s foot snagged on underwater vegetation. She panicked and went under, flailing. Lucas spotted her from the pier, dove into the water and rescued her. That night, shaking with stunned shock, Emily cried out every time she drifted to sleep. Eventually, hearing of Emily’s fear, Lucas sat outside her cabin and played his guitar. Infatuated and comforted Emily fell asleep without a single nightmare, for the rest of the trip.
Throughout the following year, Lucas was sweet and attentive. He listened to her and held her hand when she cried. Never declaring their friendship as anything more, Lucas left to visit his mother on Christmas break. When he returned, he brought with him a strange coldness. The young girls found him even more appealing. His hostile moodiness was mistaken for mysterious brooding.
Lucas ignored all of them, except Emily. Emily sneaked out to meet him. It started as midnight chats on the back steps of Mission House. They talked and shared and passed notes during church. By the light of June’s lazy moon, Lucas kissed Emily, Surprising them both with his boldness.
They’d been together since then. However, the late-night conversations started including Braden. Then an ever-buzzing cell phone joined the group. Things were too noisy and too dangerous to keep meeting close to home. So, they took to the road. The threesome cruised Honey Pot’s quiet streets every night.
One night, Lucas was particularly dark in mood and charged the car right into a trash can. Emily screamed. She believed her boyfriend had flipped. When the only damage sustained had been garbage, scattered into the road, it became a game.
Lydia asked Emily to explain their choice in victims to which, Emily replied with a frown. It had been random, at first. Then he took to only hitting the cans down Miss Jacqui’s street.
“What’s weird is,” Emily detailed, a sucker dangling from her lips. “Braden has a friend who lives on the same street, but we never skipped his trash cans.”
Lydia continued her journaling until Ivy returned with Scout, earlier than usual.
“Where’s Ethan?”
Ivy’s face glowed from exercise, but its rosy color was absent. She shoved Scout’s running stroller into the kitchen. “Something terrible has happened.” Lydia’s pen dropped from her hand.
No more, God, please no more.
✽✽✽
Hobo Joe’s eyelids shot open. His skin prickled, alerted to the sense of danger. Standing up too quickly, he slammed his foot onto the floor. White spots of pain swirled in his peripheral vision. He stuck out a hand and grabbed for his crutches.
A wicked chill blasted through the living room and shot shivering fingers up Joe’s spine. The front door swayed in the morning air. Sunlight carved past the curtains and blazed from the outside world.
Joe tightened his grasp on the crutch handle as he reached for his other crutch. His vision slowly adjusted as the pain eased and his pupils refocused amid the brilliant sunlight. Patting the couch, Joe searched for his second crutch. He spotted it scattered on the rug.
With a deep heave and a lunge, he retrieved the runaway item. Joe held the crutch handle tightly. His skin stuck to the padding. He inspected the mess. It did not end with the crutch. Blood trailed, in splotches, from the doorknob to the couch, where Joe had been sleeping. Joe threw down the bloody crutch and hobbled out the door on the other.
He vomited in his throat, as he identified the beaten boys on the lawn and hurried back into the house to call for help.
After hanging up with Honey Pot’s emergency dispatch, Joe dragged his plastered leg upstairs as quickly as possible. He worried someone had broken into the house and harmed Mrs. Muggs. She was snoring, her mouth laid open and drool leaked onto her pillow.
Joe rode the railing down the stairs. He forced his good leg to absorb his weight on impact. His other wounds blared out reprimands. Joe ignored them all. He hurried outside hollering for Miss Jacqui. He was sure she would be up and already spying on the neighbors. He flagged her for help.
Hobo Joe plopped on the lawn beside victim number one. His crutch bounced out of reach. Clumsy yet cautious fingers searched for a pulse and found only a weak twanging.
“Dear Lord, help us.” Miss Jacqui arrived, as Joe predicted she would. She knelt beside the second boy and felt his chest. His lungs rose and fell in jagged, shallow huffs. “He’s alive.”
“Mine, too. Look for any bleeding. Maybe we can slow it,” joe said.
Jacqui obeyed. Her manicured hands found a gash on the forehead of her patient. It oozed from beneath crusted blood. She untied her cardigan and used it to apply steady pressure.
The ambulance wailed up to Cordelia’s and toted the boys away before Joe caught his breath. Sheriff Ethan pulled up to the curb in his private vehicle. In sweats and running shoes, he surveyed the area.
Miss Jacqui sat stunned on the lawn. Hobo Joe belly crawled, using his arms to pull himself, across the yard. He tossed a tender arm around Jacqui’s shoulders.
Cordelia Muggs stood, vapid, at the front door wrapped in her morning robe and wearing pink house slippers. Muffin licked at a spot of blood on the porch.
“Sweet Jesus, what is happening to my town?” Ethan prayed, allowing his grief to flow from his heart into his Savior’s hands. It was time for discernment and collected courage, not mourning. His personal feelings would wait until later.