Charlaine Harris - A Fool and His Honey

“Where’d it come from?” Martin asked. It was the opening salvo in a long bombardment.

An hour later, no one had gotten anywhere, except me. I’d looked up Bobbye Sunday’s address in the telephone book, which covered several small towns in the area. The midwife lived in Bushmill, and she wasn’t answering her phone. I’d tried her number several times while Martin and Karl questioned Rory. Rory, who was wily if not intelligent, had made up his mind he wasn’t going to tell anyone anything. I felt like I was some kind of civil rights observer, there to make sure Rory wasn’t thumped by an increasingly exasperated Martin. Karl seemed to consider this Martin’s show, but he contributed to the atmosphere of menace by smoldering at Rory, with some effect.

“I never meant to hurt Therese,” the boy blurted out of the blue.

Karl slammed his palm against the kitchen table with explosive force. “I told you never to say her name!” he said. Then he turned to me. “Therese is simple,” he said bluntly. “She can cope with life, but just barely. Then this guy shows up, tells her after one date he loves her, gets her knocked up. I have to take Therese for an abortion. Phoebe’s young enough to have one of her own if she wants, we don’t want to raise Therese’s kid and it’s not our job. She can’t raise a kid, he can’t raise a kid, he doesn’t even want to marry her. But he had a fit when she had the abortion, which left her crying for weeks. He had a use for the baby, but not for Therese, who hasn’t seen or heard from him since.”

I looked at Rory in a new light. Rather than a passive accomplice to a plot not yet determined, he was an instigator of a subsidiary plot. Not a very efficient instigator, since Therese’s father had taken care of the situation, and would have outfaced Rory under any circumstances…

I was sick of trying to figure out what had happened in this farmhouse in the past few months.

“I’m going to take a ride,” I said abruptly.

“You’re going to drive in this snow?” My husband looked amazed, and that was all it took to make me grab my coat. I’d been dragged along on this, outvoted by my husband as to the wisdom of bringing Rory back to Corinth, stuck with the care of Hayden, forced to consort with Martin’s ex-wife. I was in a royal snit compounded of grievance and self-pity.

“Yes, I am,” I replied briefly.

Even as my better sense-and I did have some-told me to stay at the farmhouse, I grabbed the keys from the counter and my purse from the table and rode the crest of my snit out to the Jeep. I climbed into it, and switched on the engine.

It would have served me right if the engine had refused to start or I had driven into the fields on my way to the county road, but to my surprise I got to Route 8 just fine. I paused at the end of the driveway for a minute or two, looking at the map I’d yanked out of the glove compartment.

It was the middle of the afternoon, and the sky outside was about to loose its load of snow. I wished I could close my eyes or wiggle my nose and make the kitchenful of men disappear. Then I could go back to the farmhouse without losing face.

But I turned right, on my way to the tiny town of Bushmill.

It was easy, after all, to find Bobbye Sunday’s office. It was the little building with the snow all over the blackened and broken roof. The trailer parked behind it didn’t look damaged, but the snow around it was unbroken.

I looked out of the foggy window of the Jeep, shivering despite its efficient heating.

The nearest convenience store was manned (and I’m using the word loosely) by an adolescent male with acne and chin-length hair parted down the middle. It was not a flattering style, but I told myself that was just because I was old, and feeling older by the minute.

I smiled as winningly as I could. “Can you tell me what happened at the office down the street?” I asked.

“Which one?” he asked indifferently.

I will not snap, I told myself. I will not snap and snarl. “The burned one,” I said gently.

“It burned,” he said, smirking at the points he was scoring off the old dame who was at least in her thirties. I wondered if he would think it was as funny if I kicked him in the groin. I took a deep breath. Overreaction.

“When did it burn? Was anyone hurt?”

At least he didn’t care why I wanted to know. “I guess it was a couple nights ago,” he told me finally. “Someone broke in after midnight, the police figure. Stole some computers and stuff, set a fire. I bet she had some painkillers and stuff in there, someone could sell around here.” He smirked again. I felt like giving him a little pain.

“But Miss Sunday is all right?”

“Yep. She was at home when the fire started. She went down there in her nightgown, I heard.” Another smirk.

I turned to leave the store, lost in thought.

“Don’t you want to buy something?” the boy asked pointedly.

“I do want to find where Bobbye Sunday lives.”

“I already told you a lot of stuff,” he grumbled. “You need some gas, some cigarettes?”

“No, thank you,” I told him, out of all the things I could have said.

It had just dawned on me that I probably knew where Bob-bye Sunday lived; the small trailer behind the little office.

The woman that answered my knock was in her early thirties. She was plump and had hair the color of a rusty chrysanthemum. It was either a very inept or a very avant-garde dye job. Either way, it was notable. The cut itself was conventional, short and curly. But her ears were pierced at least four times apiece. Then again she was wearing nurse whites and orthopedic shoes.

Miss Mixed Signals.

“Bobbye Sunday?” I asked.

“Yes.” She didn’t invite me in, but she didn’t bar the door. “Have you come about the fire, are you from the insurance office?”

“No, I’m afraid I’m not.” I tried smiling, but she didn’t respond. “Could you tell me what happened?”

“Why should I talk to you?” she asked. She slammed the trailer door in my face. Bushmill was chock-full of reticent people.

I trudged back to the Jeep through the snow, feeling my blue jeans brush against my boots with the heavy feel of wet material. My feet were warm and dry, at least, and I made myself stamp the snow out of the treads of my boots before I hoisted myself up into the Jeep.

“Wait!” Bobbye Sunday slogged through the snow, holding her hands out for balance.

“I’m sorry I was so short with you,” she said, when she’d reached the side of the Jeep. I’d shut myself in, but rolled down the window. “I lost so much in that fire,” the midwife continued. “My patient records, the computers and software I’d just gotten…”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”

“I keep telling myself that.”

“Sometimes that’s not much consolation, I guess.”

“If you aren’t from the insurance company…”

“I just wanted to ask you about a patient you had, a baby you delivered, around three weeks ago? Here, at your office.”

“Oh, I can’t tell you about that,” Bobbye Sunday said firmly. “That’s private.” She hesitated. “I usually go to the mother’s house for delivery, but every now and then I deliver a baby-here. That’s all I can say.”

I could tell she meant it, and I felt sorry for her. “Goodbye,” I said, so she could get in out of the cold. “I hope your insurance comes through for you, soon.”

She made a face at me, half doubting, half smiling. “Thanks.” She turned and made her way through the yard back to the trailer door.

So that was another door shut.

I found myself wondering about the so-timely fire, destroying the record of Regina’s prenatal visits and delivery-if she had indeed delivered in Nurse Sunday’s office-right after Rory came back to Corinth. When I thought of Rory’s handsome young face, impossibly guileless, I heaved a long sigh. What would we do with Rory? Would he be safe, riding back into Corinth with Karl? Did I care? Would Martin be willing to keep the boy in the house overnight? I wasn’t sure I would.