When Judd had told her his desk was in need of some organizing, she had not pictured the piles of papers strewn in every direction. A few had perfectly round coffee rings on top of them, as if they had been used as coasters rather than paperwork. Two piles were fanned out like playing cards.
“I suppose you know exactly what is in each of these piles,” Bess told Judd, who was standing in the doorway watching her as she surveyed the task in front of her.
“Sure I do,” he assured her, walking into the room and stopping just behind her. “Don’t worry, several of them just need filed. I have some letters you could type up for me this morning, and I’ll show you what we do with the invoices and sales records.”
Within the next few hours, Bess learned more about the operations on the Taylor homestead. They worked crops to help them feed their livestock as well as growing a hectare of cotton. The cattle they ran in part to qualify for certain government subsidies and tax breaks. Looking at the books, she also understood why Judd’s job as sheriff was so important to help keep the family’s head above water.
As he leaned over her, pointing to the feed records and birth weights that needed to be typed up into specific tables, Bess noted the missing stitches in the hem of the otherwise immaculate collar of his uniform shirt. Not for the first time, she thought how much he needed a wife, someone to see to the little things for him, like the nick right behind his ear where he had cut himself shaving.
Lillian wanted to do those things for Judd. That thought made her straighten in the chair so that Judd had to ask her what was wrong. She shook her head and asked him a lame question to distract herself from her wavering emotions. Was she concerned for Judd because he was currently keeping a roof over her head, or was there something more to her fluctuating interest and anger when it came to her brother-in-law?
She tried to imagine Daniel doing this paperwork or working on the tractor in the fields just past Agnes’ dog pens as she’d seen Judd doing on more than one occasion in the past weeks. The man worked twelve or more hours at the police station every day after beginning his chores well before sunrise. When he finally came into the house most nights, his jeans and chambray shirt covered in dust, she wondered at his ability to eat without falling asleep in his dinner plate.
“Did you ever get to be a kid?” she asked him.
He stood back on his heels. “As much as the next fella in this part of the world, I suppose.”
“We used to pick pecans and shell them to sell to the grocer. Sometimes, when the nuts were scarce on the ground, we’d root out the pack rats’ nests for more.” She saw an error in the debit column in front of her and corrected it absently. “We wound up using the money for things like canned peaches and thread for mending, but sometimes we’d splurge on a matinee.”
It took her a few moments to realize that Judd was standing stark still, as if he thought she might tell him more as long as he didn’t move or make a sound to remind her she had an audience. But she had just told him one of the few happy memories of the time when she had most belonged, before her grandfather, already too old for a toddler when he’d been saddled with her, fell to the tilled earth at the back of his property with eyes that would never close again.
The room settled into an uncomfortable silence that was only broken by the shuffle of papers as Bess clamped her lips together and concentrated on the task in front of her. She could hear Judd breathing behind her. Finally, she said without turning to look at him, “I think I understand enough to keep me busy for a while, if you have to get to work.”
He sighed. “Such a tough shell,” he said enigmatically. “All right. If you need any help, ask Mama or give me a call, yes?”
Bess nodded, not trusting her voice, and kept her eyes glued to the papers on the desk. Only when she was sure that Judd had left the room did she allow her hands to shake. She tamped down the images of her tiny bed on the dirt floor of the one-room rock building where she had lived with her grandfather, of the tepid smell of the water in the old coffee cans where the legs of the bed were placed to keep the ants from crawling over her arms and legs while she slept.
She worked in the study until Agnes called her to lunch, and then she began to work on the rest of her sewing project for the pastor’s wife, who was due to come by for a fitting later that evening. She had just completed the bottom hem of the jacket when Agnes called her into the kitchen.
Bess took the re-created outfit into the kitchen with nervous fingers. She had streamlined the black skirt, making equidistant slits all the way around that provided a peek-a-boo view of the golden material she also used to create a waist-length, tailored jacket with long sleeves to wear over the scoop-neck black and gold top she’d made.
“Well?” she asked Michelle, holding her breath.
“I’ll look like Jackie Kennedy,” the other woman breathed. “May I try it on?”
Bess sighed out in relief. “Please. I want to see if I need to make any adjustments for you.”
While Michelle stepped into the bathroom to change, Agnes handed Bess a steaming cup of herbal tea. “I like a woman who keeps herself busy, goodness knows, but Bess, darling, you’ve got to give yourself some time to rest for the baby’s sake.”
“I love to sew,” Bess defended herself.
Agnes nodded, “And clean, and be Judd’s secretary. You know you get to eat even if all you did all day was read in bed?”
Agnes’ mild scolding was making Bess uncomfortable. She walked over to the kitchen table, laying her steaming mug down, and pulled out a chair. “I don’t notice you sitting around eating bonbons all day.” She glanced out the window, at the overcast sky and the wind blowing tumbleweeds across the open fields. “We’re born, we work, we die–isn’t that how life works?”
Agnes laid a warm hand on Bess’ shoulder and squeezed. “I hope you know you’re loved here, Bess, not because of what you do but because of who you are.”
Bess jerked, knocking the cup of steaming liquid onto the floor, barely missing her legs. She used the accident as an excuse to ignore Agnes’ proclamation, which touched something deep inside herself she had never felt before. Even Daniel had only loved her because she was beautiful. How could anyone feel an emotion for her that she was not sure she felt for herself?
Michelle came back into the kitchen then, her face beaming until she saw Agnes wiping up the spill on the floor. “Is everything all right?”
“Just fine,” Agnes told her. “You look incredible, Michelle!”
Michelle smoothed the skirt over her hips. “Bess, you’re a wonder! I’d have you re-do my entire wardrobe, but the church ladies would think I was suddenly shopping in designer stores.”
Bess wanted to deny the compliment, but instead she forced herself to simply say thank you. Her knees were shaking under her maternity dress. Because she didn’t want to think about how Michelle’s praise and Agnes’ affection were making her feel, Bess stood up to inspect the fit of the outfit more closely.
“I can’t believe I got this right the first time,” she said.
“I hope you had time to make yourself something equally stunning for the banquet,” Michelle told her.
Bess stammered. “I hadn’t planned on going. I’ve only been to your church a few times.”
“You have to come.” Michelle turned to Agnes. “You have to bring her. She deserves to see this dress in action.”
Agnes smiled. “Don’t worry. She’ll be there.” When Bess opened her mouth to protest, she added, “While you were in the city yesterday, I did some shopping of my own.” She left the room and returned moments later with a new dress on its hangar.
It was a black sheath dress with layers of fabric cut on a diagonal. Silver sparkles, woven throughout the fabric, shot layers of light on the linoleum floor. Bess felt tears in her eyes and batted her lashes to keep them from falling. “It’s perfect,” she finally managed.
“I’m going to get this dress back on its hangar,” Michelle said. “I can’t wait until tomorrow night.”
Michelle’s departure left an awkward silence in the kitchen. Agnes filled it. “You have that pretty pair of flats with the bow. I thought they would go perfectly with the dress.”
Bess nodded, barely. She felt the room closing in on her and knew she had to get away, to be alone for a while. Since she didn’t trust her voice, she managed to gesture with her head before turning on her heel and almost running back to her bedroom.
Sitting in the rocking chair, she felt her heart beating a rapid crescendo in her chest, even as she tried to slow her breathing. The baby tumbled around inside her, reflecting her inner turmoil. No wonder Daniel had been such a kind man. Could Bess hope to be as good a mother as Agnes obviously had been?
She picked up the tabloid she’d bought the day before and began flipping through the pages of outrageous headlines in order to distract herself. She was almost through the entire tabloid when she saw the picture. Her eyes blurred, and her breaths came in gasps so that she thought she might pass out.
It couldn’t be him. The photo was too new. He was leaning against the hood of a late-model Fairlane, his upper arms bulging muscles covered in tattoos. But those eyes, hard and slit like a snake’s, though wrinkled with crow’s feet, were the same. That thin mouth was the same that had touched her in places where her skin still crawled.
Her breath came in gasps. He was dead. She had killed him.
Her hands were shaking so badly, she couldn’t steady the paper enough to read the story that went with the picture. When she finally managed it, she was hard-pressed not to scream. The man in the picture had done hard time for killing a teenager more than a decade before, but he was out now, running a tattoo shop and getting his life back together after years of physical therapy following a serious brain injury.
At the time, the young social worker had picked Bess up at the hospital and taken her to yet another group home, promising her that she would never be threatened by that man again. Bess assumed she meant because he was dead.
Bess looked at the paper again. He definitely wasn’t dead. James Ruben, the man she’d last seen lying in a pool of his own blood, was most definitely alive.
She just managed to reach the trash can in the corner before losing the contents of her stomach. She laid her head against the closed door to her room, feeling the polished wood cooling her hot skin. Was he looking for her? Would he hurt Agnes and Judd too if he found her? Her hand gripped her stomach, and she felt a part of her die already.
Whether he was looking for her or not, Bess knew that the only way to keep her newborn baby safe was going to be to stay as far away from her child as possible.
And nobody could know about it.
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