The Secret Sense of Wildflower (21 page)

After I empty myself of tears, I feel almost relieved, like some poison has been released from a wound. Sadie dries my face with a clean handkerchief and gives it to me to blow my nose.

“What am I going to do?” I ask, searching her face for answers.

“We need to wait another month to make sure,” Sadie replies. “Then if it’s true, we’ll just deal with it.”

“But what about Mama?” I say. “She’ll kill me.”

Of all the people that might find out, I dread her the most. But hasn’t she suspected it already?

“Your Mama’s survived worse, so don’t you worry about her,” Aunt Sadie says.

Max barks, announcing Daniel coming back to pick me up. He’s in his old truck now and I’m glad we don’t have to walk home. I blow my nose one last time on Sadie’s handkerchief. Daniel won’t mind if I cry, but I just can’t bear to tell him yet.

“Let me give you something for the nausea,” she says. Sadie walks to the opposite end of the porch where her herbs are planted. She takes a handful of leaves and crushes them between her fingers and puts them in a small paper bag. “Chew on these whenever you feel it coming on. I’ll bring you more later.” Then she goes to her cupboard and pulls out a jar of blackberry wine for me to give to Daniel in exchange for bringing me and picking me up.

Before I leave, Sadie hugs me so tight I can hardly breathe, but it feels good. Daniel waves from the end of the road and waits for me there.

“Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched,” she says to me. “We’ve got a few more weeks before we know for sure.”

“It’s our secret, right? At least for now?” I ask.

“To the grave, if that’s how you want it,” she says.

I trust Sadie to keep that promise.

When I meet up with Daniel, I pretend that everything is fine. I am getting good at pretending. Max walks with us to the end of the road and then turns back. On the way home, I wonder if Daddy took any secrets to the grave. I guess everybody has them. I picture the graveyard full of secrets, tidy little packages tied onto the limbs of the weeping willow tree.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Whispering in the kitchen wakes me up early. I usually sleep later on Saturdays if Mama will let me. But the air is full of secrets that are as tangible as the smell of coffee. The last time there was whispering in the kitchen was after Ruby Monroe died. I get out of bed and follow the voices to the kitchen. Mama and Aunt Sadie are talking with Daniel and Nathan.

“What’s going on?” I ask, wiping sleep from my eyes. It is the first day I can walk without pain or soreness.

“She needs to know,” Daniel says to Mama, using his full voice.

Nathan agrees, and then hitches up his pants. Everybody looks at me and the urgency of their looks makes me shiver like someone just walked over my grave.

“Somebody better say something soon,” I say.

Mama flashes me an irritated look. “We found a note on the porch this morning,” she says.

“From who?” I say, but I’ve already guessed.

“Johnny,” Daniel says, confirming my fears.

The queasiness in my stomach moves up to my throat. “How do you know it was Johnny?” I ask.

“Well, we don’t know for sure,” Nathan says.

“What did the note say?” I ask. I want to know, but at the same time I don’t.

Nathan hands me the note written on a crumpled, dirty piece of brown paper bag. In childlike handwriting it says: YOU TOLD. YOUR DEAD.

Daniel is right. The note has to be from Johnny.

“Where was it?” I say. I take on the manner of a detective and don’t let on how terrified I am.

“Under a rock on the front stoop,” Nathan says. “I guess he snuck up here in the middle of the night.”

The thought of Johnny Monroe only a wall away from where I slept gets my body to shaking. Aunt Sadie puts a protective arm around me. She squeezes my shoulder while Mama sits at the kitchen table. Mama looks tired, like I’ve made one too many messes that she has to clean up.

My bladder sends an urgent message. “I’ve got to go up the hill,” I say.
Up the hill
means the outhouse. Daniel follows me out and keeps an eye on the woods.

I follow the stone steps, imagining Johnny’s invisible footprints are all over the place. A potent morning pee splashes dully into the dirt below the sitting hole, giving me time to think. Like everybody else, I wanted to believe that Johnny was gone and that nothing more would come of him.

When I return to the house the whole family sits around the kitchen table and Mama has biscuits just out of the oven. Her biscuits can cure just about anything, but I still have a gnawing feeling in my stomach that no food is going to help.

“I think Max should stay up here with you all for a while,” Aunt Sadie says. “He won’t let anybody get within fifty feet of the house without barking.”

Mama likes dogs even less than she likes cats, but she puts up with Max because of Sadie.

“Max is a good idea,” Daniel says, “but I think we need to do more than that. We’ve got to find Johnny.”

Nathan nods and swallows a mouthful of biscuit. “If Johnny’s in these mountains somewhere, he’s got to come down before the snows come,” he says. “Unless he’s in a cave somewhere, but even then he’ll need to get his hands on some warm clothes.”

“We need to call the sheriff and tell him what’s happened,” Daniel says, “and then I think we need to go looking for Johnny ourselves.”

“Can I go with you to make the phone call?” I ask Daniel. He’ll have to make the call from Mary Jane’s and I could use a friend right now. But the main reason is I want to stay close to Daniel. I feel safe with him.

“Sure,” he says.

“From now on you’re not to go anywhere alone,” Mama says.

“At least not until Johnny’s caught,” Daniel agrees.

We walk to Mary Jane’s and Daniel calls the sheriff while Nathan waits on the front porch like he is a sentry standing guard. Nathan’s grandfather fought in the Civil War for the Confederacy and died at the battle of Vicksburg. Nathan’s family still has the sword he carried in the Calvary.

Even though it has been nearly a hundred years ago, people in Katy’s Ridge still talk about the war like it has just been fought. Daddy always said that people in the South have long memories. With this in mind, I wonder how long it will take me to forget Johnny.

“I can’t believe he left a note,” Mary Jane says. “And right on the front porch.”

“It was creepy,” I say. We sit on the bed in her bedroom. If feels like a hundred years since we did this last.

“Are you scared?” she asks.

“Sure, I’m scared. I’d be stupid not to be.” Even though Mary Jane is trying to be nice, I realize she has no idea what this is like for me.

“Johnny wouldn’t have the nerve to do anything else,” she says. She chews on the ends of her hair.

“Yes, he would,” I say. “If anybody knows first hand what Johnny Monroe has the nerve to do, it’s me.”

Mary Jane gets quiet. Ever since Johnny attacked me, she seems different. Or maybe I am the one who is different. Mary Jane still daydreams about boys and about having a fairy tale wedding someday. All I think about is how to stay alive in this moment.

“Are you ready to go?” Daniel says to me after he makes the call. In Mary Jane’s bedroom, his head nearly touches the top of the doorframe.

I get up from the bed and take one last look around the room as if I am trying to remember my childhood. Everything has changed. Everything.

“Come over later if you want to do something fun,” Mary Jane says.

Playfulness feels like something I lost at the footbridge, along with my medallion, my rabbit’s foot and the secret sense.

“It’ll probably work better if you come over to my house,” I say. “And have Victor walk you so you don’t have to go alone.”

She frowns, like being my friend isn’t any fun anymore and comes at too big of a cost.

Daniel and Nathan and I walk the dirt road back to the house, and I remember all those walks I took in the evenings with Daddy. Back then it never even entered my mind to be scared of anything, or that there were bad people in the world who might be watching.

“One of us should be at the house all the time,” Daniel says to Nathan.

Nathan agrees and says he’ll take the first shift. Later that night, he sleeps on the sofa while Amy sews in the kitchen. I come in to get a glass of milk and Amy is working on Miss Mildred’s latest dress request, a direct copy from the Sears & Roebuck catalog. Daddy’s shotgun sits next to the kitchen table, loaded, a package of shells sitting next to it. She sees me looking at the gun.

“Don’t worry, Louisa May, they’ll get him,” Amy says. Her long hair is in a loose braid.

I always thought me and Amy were as different as night and day. But Johnny threw her to the ground, too, though she never said he did any more than that. Knowing Johnny, he must have tried. But how did Amy escape and not me? My brain is too full of fear to ask.

After drinking the milk, I say my goodnights and go to the bedroom where Meg is already snoring like a lumberjack. She always falls asleep before me. Instead of the porch, where Max usually sleeps, he lies on the floor next to the bed, close enough that I can lean down and pet him.

“Thanks for being here, Max,” I whisper, “and don’t you worry about Sadie, she’ll be just fine.” His tail dusts the wooden floor.

It takes forever for me to fall asleep and then when I finally do, a loud gunshot, in the middle of the night, shakes us all awake. Meg and I run in the direction of the shot, following Max who is barking like crazy. Mama, Nathan, Meg and I all arrive in the kitchen at the same time.

The back door stands wide open. Amy has Daddy’s shotgun still aimed at the door. Her arms are shaking and the gun rattles with the movement. The acrid smell of gunpowder fills the room. Max, finally awake, runs outside and continues barking wildly on the back porch. Nathan takes the gun from Amy.

“I think I hit him,” she says, her voice quivering. “He jimmied the lock and came right on in. I didn’t even have time to call out or anything. But he didn’t expect I’d be sitting here waiting on him.”

Amy buries her head in Nathan’s chest, her entire body shaking. “I think I hit him,” she says again, her words muffled in Nathan’s shirt. She’s crying now.

“Go get Daniel,” Mama tells Nathan, stepping in to hold Amy.

Nathan does as he is told and goes into the living room to lace up his boots. Within seconds he runs out the door with a lantern. Through the living room window I watch the light he carries fade and then disappear down the hill.

As Meg reloads the shotgun, I pace the house. A kitchen chair is jammed under the doorknob in case Johnny returns. Amy is still shaking like a leaf in a strong wind. But after I tell her about our watchdog, Max, not waking up until the shot, she starts to laugh.

“Max slept through it?” Amy asks. "So much for him not letting anybody get within fifty feet."

“He was curled up in our room,” I say.

Amy’s laughter calms her and she stops shaking.

“Don’t tell Sadie,” Mama says. “She thinks that old dog can walk on water.”

“Well, at least he’s doing a good job, now,” I say.

Max hasn’t stopped barking on the back porch, no matter how much we try to shush him. Maybe his old man pride is injured and he’s trying to make it up to us.

Mama passes Amy to Meg and puts on a pot of coffee while we wait on the men to return. I sit in Daddy’s chair in the shadows of the living room, wishing he were here. My hands are shaking now and before I have time to stop it, vomit rises in my throat. I rush outside and heave over the porch rail into the dark night. It is as if my body wants to rid itself of all the fear. The purging feels awful and good at the same time.

I hear Meg’s voice behind me. “Are you okay?” she asks.

“Not really,” I say truthfully, wiping my mouth on my nightgown.

“We should tell Mama,” she says.

“No,” I say. “Definitely not.”

“Why not? If you’re sick she needs to know.”

“I’m not sick, I’m just scared,” I say.
And maybe in a family way,
I want to add.

The first hints of daylight outline the mountains in front of us. I turn around. Meg looks worried.

“I’m okay,” I say to reassure her.

Seconds later we hear voices. It is Nathan, with Daniel and Jo, coming up the hill. Nathan and Daniel carry shotguns.

As soon as the sun comes up more and they are full of Mama’s coffee, Daniel and Nathan go out back to search for clues.

Daniel calls from halfway up the slope that he’s found blood.

“Amy must have hit him!” Nathan calls back. He sounds proud.

It never occurred to me that Amy might be a good shot. Daddy taught us all how to shoot, but none of us have ever really practiced. Amy must have a good eye from all that sewing.

The men come back into the house to warm themselves by the stove and plan what to do next. Mama pours them more hot coffee.

“If he’s hit we may be able to catch him,” Daniel says.

“I agree,” Nathan says, “and we need to leave soon if we’re going.”

Nathan hitches up his pants and tightens his belt while Mama wraps up some ham and biscuits for Daniel to pack in his day bag. They grab their shotguns by the door and are about to set out.