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Teresa dug under the bed trying to find her golden cross necklace. It must have fallen off somewhere. She lifted the bed skirt, and all thought of her necklace vanished from her mind.
Her slippers. Caked with dried mud.
The reality of the previous night’s activities rushed to the surface of her mind and left her breathless. Her entire body trembled, and a chill slithered through her.
She dashed to the bathroom and threw up.
“ ‘Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you,’ ” she said in a shaking whisper. The rest of James 4:7 escaped her. She brushed her teeth.
Tiffany and her friend had told her Ruthie would be fine. Teresa spat into the sink and rinsed. Ruthie wasn’t dead. She was okay. Teresa would go to the diner and prove it. Her hands continued to shake so hard she nearly poked her eye out with the mascara wand.
Downstairs, she turned toward the kitchen to see if Derrick and Maggie were there and froze. The door to the basement stood wide open.
Teresa tore downstairs. A panicky feeling tightened her lungs. The baby’s furniture. Gone. All of it. The crib, the dresser, the rocking chair, the nursing pillow. All the stuffed animals. Every. Last. Memory.
No. Not all of it. She ran back upstairs to the front room. Big Bear still sat on the love seat. She grabbed him, hugged him to her, and laughed. The bear responsible for the baby’s death was the last piece of the baby she had left. The irony was cruel. She wondered if Derrick knew Big Bear was even in the front room. She tucked him among the pillows on a chair in the corner.
Tiffany would be hers again soon enough. But her stomach turned at the thought of taking six more souls. She covered her mouth with her hand and sobbed only once. That’s all she allowed. Part of being a wife was to present oneself with elegance and poise. Her husband was not to see her distraught, only happy. She’d slipped up lately, but not anymore. She had more strength than that.
Teresa went back to the basement door and closed it. She strode down the hall and pulled on her coat. The air outside nipped her cheeks.
The sign in the diner’s window flashed its red letters. Open. She smiled. Ruthie was okay. Alive and well. Teresa went inside. The tables and booths were packed. She frowned. The church crowd? She checked her watch. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d missed church.
The person who greeted her with a harried hello and a hand flung toward the dining room was not Ruthie.
“Sit wherever you want,” the woman said. She resembled Ruthie in every way—except she had fashionable clothing and styled hair. Ruthie wore jeans and flannel and always had her hair in a pony tail. This woman wore a button-down blouse and black slacks. Her hair curled slightly around her shoulders.
Teresa sank into the bench of a small booth and willed herself not to jump to conclusions.
Perhaps Ruthie was just out sick.
She gazed around the restaurant at the patrons. The greasy food here probably kept Derrick’s clinic in business with gut ailments. Sheriff McMichael sat in a corner booth shoveling something smothered in gravy into his mouth. A side of fries, also smothered in gravy, sat in a basket nearby.
He’s so . . . fat. Look at the size of his belly flopped over his belt like that.
Her frown deepened.
The waitress came to Teresa’s table and filled her coffee cup.
“Who are you?” Teresa asked.
“Debbie. Ruthie’s sister,” the woman said. “You know that, Doctor Hart. You delivered my first baby.”
Teresa cocked her head to the side. “Oh, yes, Debbie.” She touched the spot on her breastbone where the cross usually hung. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you.”
“Three kids later,” Debbie said with a half-hearted laugh and a light touch to her stomach, though it was flat.
“Three?” Teresa said. “Who delivered the other two?”
Debbie’s mouth dropped open, closed, opened again.
Teresa smiled and waved a hand. “That’s not important.” She forced a laugh. “The important question is, where’s Ruthie?”
Debbie looked at the coffeepot in her hand. Her lip trembled. She looked at Teresa with tear-filled eyes. “Excuse me.” She dashed off toward the kitchen.
Teresa reached for her necklace again. Her eyes welled with tears. Her cross was gone.
Ruthie is gone.
Teresa gasped. Her necklace had to be at Ruthie’s house. She slid off her chair, hurried to the front of the restaurant, and dashed outside. Police tape lay on the ground at the top of the hill. A cold breeze set it writhing across the ground like a dying snake.
Her chest tightened. This was happening. It was real. She stole Ruthie’s soul and gave it to some handsome stranger in the abandoned funeral home so she could get her dead daughter back.
Teresa jogged down the hill. Police tape sealed Ruthie’s front door. They’d already searched it. They’d already found her cross. They would find her out. They would know.
A rattling whisper spoke behind her. “What have you done?”
Louise, the town loony, stood behind her—close enough that Teresa saw the wrinkles etched deep into the old woman’s skin. Her sharp gray eyes widened.
It wasn’t quite a question, though. It was a reprimand. The way a parent would address a child’s mess. Louise took a few steps back and stopped. Her eyes narrowed for a moment, then widened again.
“What did you say?” Teresa’s mouth went dry. She took a step toward Louise, and the old woman backed away. The wind lifted her scraggly gray hair, adding a little more lunacy to her already crazed expression.
“You don’t know what you’re doing.”
Teresa frowned, even though she knew it caused lines to form on her forehead. Louise kept backing away. Teresa followed. The old woman scrambled to the front of the diner and gave one last alarmed look at Teresa before dashing inside.
Teresa swallowed away the dryness in her throat. How? But no, Louise wouldn’t know. How could she know? She couldn’t. No one was out that late. Ruthie’s screams, though. How did they not wake the whole town?
Teresa’s heartbeat pulsed along the edges of her vision. She couldn’t let this woman spread rumors about her. She followed Louise inside and stood by the door.
The crazy woman yelled, “Darkness—it has come! The End of Days shall be upon us! Have you repented for your sins?”
The patrons shied away. If Ruthie had been there, she would have nicely guided Louise to a booth and given her a free breakfast. But Ruthie wasn’t there. Debbie was.
Debbie, harried by the rush of breakfast-goers, pointed the coffee pot at Louise, then the door, sloshing coffee onto the floor. “I will not have you disturbing these people. Please leave, or I’ll call the sheriff and have you removed,” she yelled.
Teresa looked around. Sheriff McMichael had already left. He made short work of that breakfast.
Louise, not missing a beat, turned her gaze to Debbie and took two staggering steps toward her. She lifted a knobby finger.
“Your sister was the first of many—”
“Get. Out. Now.” Debbie said. “Bobby! Call the sheriff,” she yelled toward the kitchen.
“I’ll leave,” Louise said. “But you mark my words.” She swung around, addressing the entire diner now, pointing her hand as she went. “A great darkness shall descend! The End of Days! They are upon us!”
Teresa backed out the front door and into the cold. Louise did the same and wandered away. Teresa followed, but at the town square she stopped. Louise hadn’t said a thing about Teresa or what she thought Teresa had done. Her comment about Ruthie was close but innocent. Sort of. Teresa, lost in her worries, didn’t realize she had gone directly to the abandoned funeral home.