Chapter Nine
“Katie Ellen, where are you?” On his knees, Josiah lifted the quilt hanging off the bed for a second look into the shadows. He’d told her to stay in the house, but was he really surprised to find she’d thought of a better idea? “Katie Ellen, come on out! I’ve got to talk to you!” He waited, listening for any response, but the house was empty. Before he turned to exit the room, something caught his eye.
The floorboards creaked beneath his boots as he reverently eased to the windowsill. Could he believe what he was seeing? Two geodes sat side by side, one rolled up against the other. He hadn’t left them like that. No, last he saw, she’d parted them. What did it mean?
He had to find her.
If she wasn’t in the house, then surely she’d holed up in the barn. He jogged out the front door, anxious to ask her and maybe pick up where they’d left off. And now that he and Silas understood each other . . .
The barn door was open. He ran through, but her name died on his lips at the sight of Silas sprawled out on the floor with a bloody face. Where was Katie Ellen? All his misgivings of Silas returned, but no, it couldn’t be.
“Josiah!” Her cry filled the barn. He spun on his boot looking all about.
“Where are you?”
“You’re alive! When he returned alone I thought . . . I thought . . .”
Josiah followed the sound of her voice up, up, up . . . How in blazes did she get up there?
Silas groaned. His foot rolled to the side and bumped against a hammer.
“What happened to him? Why are you up there? I told you to stay in the house.”
“You think this is my fault? You sent him in here alone. What was I supposed to think?”
Josiah scratched the back of his head. “You did this? How?” But then he followed the line from the hammer, to Silas’s bloody forehead, up to her perch. “For crying aloud. . . .” He knelt beside Silas, who wasn’t moving at all. “Get down here.”
“Is it safe?”
“Do you think I would’ve brought him back if I didn’t trust him? And now you pert’ near killed him.”
“Well, you left fearing for your life and then he comes back alone—”
“If you would’ve been where I told you to wait—”
“Under a bed? Yeah, no one would think to look there.” Even hugging a beam thirty feet above his head, she still thought she’d won the argument.
“Come down.”
She pulled back a lock of hair that was dangling in her face. “I can’t. Not until you lift the sling up to me.”
Her and her blamed contraptions. Silas’s chest rose and fell in a somewhat regular pace. Nothing Josiah knew to do for him anyway. Stepping over him, he took ahold of the rope and walked it down until the sling smacked into the brace. He moved to the left, positioning the sling beneath her, but still didn’t like the looks of the gap. One off-kilter move and that sling would lurch catawampus, dumping her out.
“I really wish it were me climbing down instead of watching you do it.”
“I got myself up here; I can get myself back down.” Wrapping her arms around the square beam, Katie Ellen slowly slid to one side. White petticoats and pantalets flashed. Now her legs hung down, her brown boots fishing for the sling beneath her. He tensed, trying to pull the sling closer, but it was at its full height.
“I can’t find it.” Her words sounded wrung from her lungs.
Josiah’s stomach twisted. Helpless. He felt so helpless. But hadn’t God worked out everything with Silas? He had to trust that this would work out. “Katie Ellen, you’re going to be fine. You can do this.”
“Shut up! You’re just saying that because you think I’m fixing to die.”
He wrapped the rope around his forearm again on account of his hands getting sweaty. “You’re going to be fine. I’ve got you. You can let go.” He braced himself as her hands slipped away from the beam.
She fell and landed into the sling without so much as a peep. Josiah lowered that sling a mite faster than was prudent, only remembering at the last moment to move it so Silas wasn’t further accosted. She lay on her back, hands gripping the side like a hammock. Her head might have bounced a little, but he was in a hurry to get to her, so she shouldn’t be too particular. He rustled through the canvas until he found a boot, but she wriggled out of his grasp and crawled out the other end on her hands and knees.
“Is he dead?” She asked.
“You better hope not.”
A red line stretched from Katie Ellen’s forehead to jaw, a souvenir from that beam. Noticing his gaze, she rubbed it ruefully. “What do you mean bringing him back?”
“Me and him had a good talk, and you won’t believe what he told me.” She looked skeptical. “He’s a preacher man, Katie Ellen. A circuit rider. He heard the commotion in the kitchen when you dropped those greens—that’s why he came in. When we didn’t have our story straight, he thought we were up to no good and tried to get his bluff in on us. That’s all.”
With one eyebrow raised, she crossed her arms. “A bluff? Like breaking the window and catching the sofa on fire?”
“Naw, those were accidents. He didn’t mean no harm. He helped me, in fact. The hill was all washed out. I lost my footing and nearly fell, but he caught me and saved my neck.”
“What about the gun under his coat?”
“It’s a Bible. He let us go on thinking he was armed just in case we meant him trouble.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”
“Tell him what?”
“That we aren’t married?”
Josiah shrugged. “What’s it matter? He’ll get a good laugh over it.”
Katie Ellen pressed her hand to her forehead. “You can’t tell him, Josiah. We spent the night in the same room. He’s a man of God. He’s supposed to be opposed to such carryings-on.”
She grabbed him by the arm. “Next thing you know we’ll be used in a sermon as an example of the depravity of our generation. All over Hart County people will be speculating on who the brazen young woman was who’d shacked up while her parents were trying to find her a decent husband.”
“That’s enough, right there. I’m going to make a more than passable husband.”
Releasing him, she took a step back. “Are you proposing to me, Josiah Huckabee?”
“No, I’m not.” His jaw hardened. “I’ve got a parson that you done clocked in the head with a hammer to attend to. You wait your turn.”
Katie Ellen hurried ahead of Josiah to open the door for him as he made painful progress across the barnyard with Silas’s arm thrown over his shoulder. The man seemed to know where he was, but he’d never been extremely coherent, so they couldn’t be certain. Either way, without Josiah’s support he’d be facedown in a puddle. And it had started to rain again, the brief sunshine only teasing them with what they’d lost.
She bustled into the house, surprised again by the monstrous pile of charred sofa bones. She’d worked so hard to get her parents to let her stay alone. . . . Running to the bedroom, she pulled the quilt off the bed and spread it on the floor in front of the fireplace, wishing she had an oilcloth. Looked like she’d be dabbing bloodstains out of the quilt, but she’d try not to let it bother her. Compared to the mess in the center of the room and the mud the two men tracked in as they made their unsteady way, it wasn’t her biggest concern.
Josiah deposited his groaning load onto the floor.
Silas peered up at her with one bewildered eye. “I don’t know what happened,” he said, “but there’s an angel in heaven who’s the spitting image of you. I done saw her flying over me as I walked the valley of the shadow.”
Katie Ellen bit her lip. Josiah propped his hands on his hips. “You took a nasty hit on the forehead, Parson. Your memories are likely muddied.”
“I remember you trying to kill yourself going down that hill,” he said. “Wish you weren’t so upset about the sofa. I’ve already got folks to bury. Don’t want to put another under until it’s his time.”
Again with the dark talk, but now knowing his vocation, it didn’t threaten as it had before. Katie Ellen hurried to fetch a compress dipped in witch hazel. Smoke lingered in the kitchen. She threw open the shutters to clear the air and banish the fog in her mind.
Josiah hadn’t died, which created horrendous complications in regards to that kiss. Only because of the circumstances—the unbelievably intense and distressing circumstances—had the event been allowed to transpire. But wasn’t she trying to change? That meant giving him another chance. That meant being vulnerable. That meant living with the consequences, however unintended. But maybe . . . just maybe he wouldn’t change his mind this time.
Wringing the rag over the sink, she returned to the men and did what she did best . . . cleaned up the mess.