The Major's Wife (Jubilant Falls series Book 2) (19 page)

"I know it, Jar."

"The whole town's talking ‘bout her…everybody knows the truth now." Jarred pointed his bony finger at me. I hung my head again, too guilty to speak. "They're sayin’ we all took turns with her, that she let us, that she wanted it."

“Shut up! Shut up, both of you!" Otis screamed, knocking Jarred to the ground. He pinned Jarred's arms down with his legs and sat on his chest, beating his face bloody with his fists. "You dirty bastard! Don't you talk ‘bout my sister like that! Don't you ever say it!"

Jarred pushed Otis from atop him. They fell together, like twin timbers, rolling together across the fresh dirt of Ma's grave, mixing blood and earth as they traded blows.

"She killed her, just as if she pulled the trigger herself!" Will cried out. "If she kept her mouth shut, Ma would still be alive!"

"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" I screamed in anguish. "I can't stand this any more! I can't stand it!" Pushing past Conrad into the street, I ran through the horrified knot of women, knowing that this time I was running to save my own life.

* * *

"The sedative I gave her should put her to sleep for at least four hours." Somewhere on the fuzzy edge of reality, I heard Ed Nussey speak. I was back in my own bed, in my own nightgown. Someone pulled the eyelet comforter up to my chin.

"There now," a warm voice said. "You just close your eyes. You're back home."

"What do you know about her past?" Ed asked. "From what the deputies at the jail told me, I would suspect that there has been some serious sexual abuse or trauma in her past. Were you aware of anything like that?"

The warm voice slurred unintelligibly, through my drugged mind.

I felt darkness, warmth, and comfort begin to envelope me. I was safe now. I was home. In Jubilant Falls. No one would ever find me here.

* * *

My heart was pounding in my ears, as I threw open the door to the tarpaper shack my brothers and me called home. My folks’ bedroom, the only bedroom, was empty. In the big room, nobody sat in the ugly, beat-up couch, or the ragged overstuffed chair with three legs, or at the table where Ma had took her life. Someone had left behind a casserole of chicken and dumplings; someone else had made the attempt to scrub the blood from the wall behind the table, but it had stained a reddish-brown. I knew Conrad would spend Sunday, his only day off from working the mines, painting it. It was just his way.

I shimmied up the ladder, to the attic where my brothers and me slept. When I turned ten, Ma insisted that two old sheets be sewn together to separate the wide, attic space. A growing girl needed her privacy after all, she had said.

Pa had smiled in a way I didn't like. He tried one night to slip his hands down the front of my nightgown, when the boys was out and Ma was working, but Conrad came home early, and Pa had warned me never to speak of it.

Still, the curtain went up the next day. It was like a big, ole permission slip, them two sewn-together bed sheets. Six years of it, night after awful night; he left me alone only the week before I got my period and nights when Ma was home. Pa come home punch drunk from Flagler’s Tavern, climb the ladder, with the boys lying right on the other side of those sheets, and say those awful words that I never forget.

Hold still, honey.

Hold still, and this won't hurt.

Don't scream…someone will hear you. I'll be done, soon.

Don't scream, or I'll hit you again.

Don't scream, damn you, don't scream!

No, I wouldn't scream anymore, because I was getting away. I yanked the sheets from the nails that attached them to the ceiling and, real fast, put all my stuff into it: another dress, some underwear, the quilt from my bed that Ma had made. I took Conrad's Bowie knife from beneath the mattress that he and Otis shared.

No more whispers. No more secrets. Like Jarred said, everybody knew the truth, now. But everybody was wrong. It wasn't my fault. I had to leave. Pa said if I ever told anybody, he’d kill me. I told, and now Ma was dead. The whole world knew. I swung my bundle over my shoulder. It wouldn't happen again. Nobody would ever do that to me again.

Downstairs, the screen door rattled on its hinges as Pa staggered in drunk, as usual.

"Marian!" he bellowed. "Marian, you teasin' little slut! I know you're in here."

I froze. Below me in the big room, the chicken and dumplings crashed to the floor as Pa fell against the table, bellowing like a bull. "Where are you, you little whore?"

I stepped to the top of the ladder. "Up here, Pa." I slid my belongings from my shoulder and knelt at the edge. Slowly, I pulled out Conrad's knife.

"I told you never to say nothin’ to nobody, didn't I?" Pa slurred, as he started up the ladder. "Well, you little slut, you done got me fired. Ain't got a job now to support your ass or them worthless brothers of yern, all because of you ‘n’ yer big mouth.”

"No, Pa. That ain't my fault." The words came out calmly, as I locked both hands around the knife handle and raised it above my head. If I couldn't do it right the first time, he’d kill me, and nobody would ever find my body. "You did it all to me and I ain't lettin' you do it anymore."

Pa was laughing, as his head came up through the opening in the attic floor. "And how you gonna stop me, Missy? I can break your neck with one—"

I shoved that knife into his chest, as hard as I could. I felt something hard, then a warm wetness as the blade went in. The knife slid back out so easily, I thought I missed. Then blood went everywhere – Lord, I never seen so much blood – as Pa fell backwards down the ladder, breaking every rung.

I watched for a minute, while he lay there, trying to get up, trying to stop the blood from coming out that big, old hole, making funny animal sounds and reaching up for me, wanting help. I never seen nobody die before. I felt so apart from it, as I watched, not caring or nothing, like when Conrad gutted that deer he got last winter when Pa wasn't working. After a while, Pa's body went limp in the red pool, his eyes still and shiny like glass.

Even as he lay dying, that twisted old bastard never once said he was sorry, never once begged for my forgiveness. His mouth would move, and there be blood coming out, and his eyes would look all panicky. But I just stared at him. Stared and watched him die.

I used to think about getting back at Pa. I used to think I’d run away, or I’d kill him, just like I did now. I used to plan it at night, when he be laying on top of me, rutting like a pig. I had all kinds of different ways to do it; rat poison in the thermos of coffee he took down to the mines was one. I kept a knife under my pillow, ‘til he found it.

I thought when I did really kill him, when it really happened, I’d feel like I won. I thought I be proud of getting him away from me forever. But I wasn't. I was scared, more scared than I’d ever been in my whole life. I killed both my parents.

I picked up my stuff all rolled up in them sheets, jumped down from the attic, and ran into the woods. Nobody would ever find me, I vowed. Nobody would ever know who the real Marian was.

And for a long time, nobody did. I put myself through secretarial school at night, while working days in a munitions plant in Charleston during the war. When the war was over, I moved to Ohio, got a job at Plummer County Community Hospital as the secretary on one of the wards, then met and married the best looking resident on the floor.

Dr. Montgomery James was not only a doctor he was a war hero. In France, he earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart for going in under German fire to save a fellow soldier who been hit in the chest by shrapnel. Monty took a bullet in the leg for his trouble, but managed to drag the wounded solider to safety.

We were so happy. Montgomery James was tall and handsome, with dark, red hair and a face like Tyrone Power. He knew everything about me, except that I killed Pa, and he loved me anyway.

After a few years, I had more money and prestige than I ever dreamed. For once in my life, people envied me. I couldn't let them down. I couldn't let them see that down underneath all the fancy clothes, the fancy car, and the money, I held a darker secret than anyone could imagine.

But the voices were right. It took nearly fifty years, but they found me. Now everybody knew the truth.

* * *

"Mother, I really think you ought to see a psychiatrist."

"I do not need a psychiatrist!" Shakily, I pulled my handkerchief from the sleeve of my bed jacket and clumsily dabbed at my lipstick. I had not left the sanctuary of my bedroom since my arrest, but remained propped up on my pillows, unable to speak to anyone for two days. The voices kept me there. Beneath my comforter in my own bed, they stayed quiet, particularly when I had company. But when I was alone and out of bed, the voices came: Ma with her hair tied back and in her coffin clothes, walking the floor beside me; Pa in his pool of blood, reaching up for me whenever I tried to step on the floor.

Marian,
they said.
We know the truth. We know the truth.

So I stayed in my bed where I was safe.

Then Kay came to visit me with the children, with all her supposed concern and her silly idealism. I hadn't protected her or her children. By ruining myself, I had ruined her, too.

"I don't need a psychiatrist!" I repeated, handing Andrew and Lillian a box of Godiva chocolates, a gift from Ed and Ellen Nussey.

"Please, don't give the kids so much sugar, Mother. Andrew, leave your sister alone," Kay wrestled the box from the children and put it back in my lap. "Kids, why don't you see if Novella has any goodies for you in the kitchen?" The children clamored noisily from the room, and Kay closed the door behind them. "Now Mother, there is obviously something in your past that caused you to break down at the jail.”

“I don’t think that’s anything you need to concern yourself with,” I said, folding my arms.

“Mother, they have medications that can help people with these illnesses. Mental illness is not something to be ashamed of any more!”

“I am not mentally ill!” I yelled, slapping the covers.

“Of course not. Who are these people they said you were asking for at the jail? Your brothers and your parents? What is that all about? ”
“They’re lying. I have no family—you know that.”

“I don’t know if what I do know about you is true anymore, Mother. I can't believe you knew what was going on with Aurora Development, or that you had anything to do with the attempt on Jess Hoffman's life. No one could get anywhere close to you to lay a hand on you, Mother. You were curled up in a fetal position and screaming, when the deputies took you to the hospital.”

“What does that prove?"

"If you’re mentally ill, which, of course, you say you’re not, it could prove you weren't responsible for your actions. It could lead to a reduction in charges." Kay arched her eyebrows. "Attempted murder charges, Mother."

"I am aware of what the charges are. Martin Rathke will fix everything."

"It appears Martin Rathke has been fixing things for quite a long time now, Mother. I don't think he can get you out of this one."

"But what will everyone at the club think? That I'm completely unbalanced?"

"Then tell me what happened to you at the jail." Kay gave me one of those hard-edged looks a mother gives to a recalcitrant child.

"Nothing happened at the jail! Why won't anyone believe me?"

"Then why don't you remember?"

"I don't know!" Furious now, I rang the silver bell beside the nightstand. "I think it's time that you and the children leave."

Novella poked her head into the bedroom. "Yes, Mrs. James?"

"Please see Kay and the children to the door."

"Just tell me the truth, Mother. Did you do what Marcus said in that article? Did you hate him so much that you wanted him dead?"

"Novella?"

"Miss Kay, I don't think your mama is up to this just yet. Why don't you and I go downstairs?"

"Out, Novella! I want her out of the house!"

"Yes'm." Novella opened the door wider. "Please, Miss Kay."

Kay shrugged. "If that's the way you want it."

Dutifully, she kissed me on the cheek and followed Novella into the hallway. Instantly I was on my feet, my ear against the bedroom door.

"Novella, what in God's name is going on?" I heard Kay whisper.

"Miss Kay, all I know is that she come home with Doc Nussey and Mr. Rathke, weepin' and wailin’ like she seen a ghost."

"The arraignment was all over the papers this morning. She didn't see that, did she?"

“No.”

For God sake, I didn't need the newspaper. I had clicked on the television news, just in time to see a clip of Martin pushing that TV reporter over. Predatory little snit! Who did she think she was, anyway, asking me those questions? But why don't I remember that? Why don't I even remember going in front of Judge McMullen?

"What about this breakdown? That's what it obviously is, a breakdown," Kay continued. "No one knows about that, do they?"

Novella must have gestured in reply, because I didn't hear her answer.

"God, I hope not, for her sake. Well, let me know if anything happens." There was the sound of footsteps and children's voices moving down the hall. I slipped back under the eyelet comforter and, trying to look innocent, ran my silver brush through my hair.

The doorknob turned, and Novella answered once more.

"Did you show them out, Novella?"

"You was listenin', wasn’t you?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I know you, Mrs. James, probably better than anybody else in this town, and I got a few things I need to get off my chest."

"I did not have a breakdown! Those idiots down at the
Journal-Gazette
have it in for me! My attorney, even my daughter might call this little setback a breakdown, but it's not! Tell me I didn't have a breakdown, Novella, please?" I reached into the nightstand's top drawer and groped for the bottle of Valium Ed prescribed for me. It wasn't there. "I really am just a little over-excited, yes, just a little over-excited, what with being arrested and having it all through the papers. My pills, Novella. Where are my pills?"