Julia Spencer-Fleming - Out Of The Deep I Cry

There was a splatter of water, and Clare and Lilly jumped aside. Whitley, heavy-duty black hose clutched in her hands, sprayed at the side of the bus, rinsing off the soap, the windows, the tires, and, occasionally, the top of the bus. Skylar ignored her, steadily piling small stones in one hand and then dropping them into puddles. “Isn’t it a little early to be getting your things ready?” Clare asked.

Lilly shook her head. “The season starts in April. If it weren’t so damn cold, we could take the punters out on the rivers next week. Even before the dams start releasing, there’s some amazing water out there.”

“What happens when the dams release?”

“Woo-he!” Lilly raised her hands and dropped them, raised and dropped them, like a person sketching a roller-coaster ride. “Class-four and-five rapids. Very challenging. There are places along the Sacandaga where I wouldn’t make a run in April with a raft full of expert guides.” She grinned. “I might have done it once, when I was younger, but now I gotta make sure I’m around to see my grand-kids grow up. Hey, baby, stay away from that road, or you’re going to have to have a time-out.”

Whitley had dropped the hose and was inching toward the country road.

“Look!” Her grandmother strode forward and picked her up. “Here comes a car now, silly girl. No going on the road without a grown-up.” She singsonged the last sentence, as if she had said it so many times it was mere rote by now.

The car was slowing down, perhaps responding to the sight of the little girl headed for the road. The Clows’ front door banged, and Debba rattled down the porch stairs, the leather-bound diary in one hand. She crunched down the gravel drive. She looked at Clare, opened her mouth as if to say something, then addressed her mother, who was still holding Whitley in her arms. “Is she being unsafe again?” Debba paused at the edge of the road to let the car pass, but it slowed even further, then rolled to a stop between the house and the barn. Not pulling over, just stopped. In the road.

The weirdness of it made the back of Clare’s neck prickle. Lilly glanced at her, glanced back at the car, shifted her granddaughter to her hip.

The driver was a woman, but hard to make out from their side of the road, with the morning sun bouncing straight off the driver’s-side window. Then the door swung open and Renee Rouse stepped out, as impeccable as the last time Clare had seen her, her cashmere sweater and perfectly draped pants looking so out of place compared to the Clows’ water-stained jeans and Wellies that for a moment, the gun she had in her hand seemed just another discrepancy, like the gold bangle and the leather pumps.

“Ho-ly Christ,” Lilly said.

Renee stepped away from the car and swung the gun toward Debba, stiff armed, her movements jerky. “Where is my husband?” she said.

Clare could see it better now, a big.38, the sort of gun people bought when they went into a store and said, “Gimme something with stopping power.” From the way she was holding it, Clare doubted Renee had ever done anything more with it than tell her husband to keep it locked up out of sight. She might not even have taken the safety off.

Debba’s hands went up to waist height, as if she didn’t know if she was supposed to raise them or not. “I don’t know.”

Renee took another step toward her. “You did something to him out there. I want to know what you did. I want to know where my husband is!” Her voice broke on the last word.

Lilly, her boots planted in the mud and her arms whipcorded around Whitley, swayed back and forth, as if torn between going to her daughter or retreating with her granddaughter. Skylar ambled within arm’s reach, pebbles in hand, and his grandmother snagged him one-handed and drew him to her side.

“Mrs. Rouse.” Clare was surprised at how calm she sounded, considering her heart was jackhammering in her chest and a tide of adrenaline was tripping every nerve ending she had.

Renee twisted toward her, keeping the gun pointed in Debba’s direction. Clare could see her face now, pale white and blotchy red, her eyes swollen and stained with too much crying. Clare lifted her arms in the same welcoming gesture she used in church, unhurried, unthreatening. “I know your heart’s breaking right now,” she said, “but this isn’t right. Look around you. There are children here. Are you really going to shoot a mother in front of her children?”

Renee looked at Whitley, who had stopped squirming on Lilly’s hip and was now clinging to her grandmother, whimpering. Then the doctor’s wife turned back to Debba. “If I have to,” she said, her voice flat.

O-kay. That was the wrong question. How did she get involved in these things? She didn’t know anything about negotiations. “Let Lilly take the children into the house,” she said. “Then Debba and you and I can talk about this.”

“No.” She waved the gun toward Debba. “You don’t think I’d do it. But I will. I want to know what you did with Allan!”

“I didn’t do anything with him!” Debba shouted. Whitley started to cry, and Skylar, who had been staring at his mother, twisted out of his grandmother’s hold and pressed himself to the purple bus.

Whang! The boy beat his hands against the bus. Whang! Whang! The hollow metallic sounds were like a whale assaulting a submarine.

“What is that?” Renee said, her head swiveling between Skylar and Debba. “What’s he doing? What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s autistic, thanks to your husband!”

If Clare had had a gun, she would have shot Debba herself. Renee swung the gun straight at Debba’s face. “I ought to shoot you right now, you witch!” Debba squawked and ducked, covering her head with her arms. Renee pivoted, and the gun was now pointed at Whitley. “Or maybe it should be her first!”

Lilly cried out and turned, moving forward, one step, two, before the gun went off with a sound that filled up the valley like God’s handclap.

“Stop right there!” Renee ordered.

Clare clenched her teeth, forcing herself not to lunge forward. She realized the doctor’s wife had shot high. Lilly stood in the barnyard, trembling, holding Whitley to her front so that her body was between her granddaughter and the gun. The echo of the shot rolled off. Debba was sobbing now, still bent over, her son beating away the outside world; Whang! Whang! Whang!

Clare considered the distance between herself and Mrs. Rouse. If she rushed fast enough and hard enough, she might be able to knock the older woman over even with a bullet in her. Then Debba could get the gun. If she could keep it together. If she even thought of it. Clare wasn’t afraid. She was glad she wasn’t afraid. Just worried that Debba wouldn’t understand what to do, and that she’d die for nothing.

Hardball Wright stood behind her, draped his memory arms around her shoulders, and gave her a shake. There’s a better way. Misdirect. Feint. Delay. Reinforcements.

And she saw it, the whole thing laid out, what she had to do.

There’s hope for you yet, Fergusson. Hardball laughed in her ear.

“Mrs. Rouse,” she said, this time letting her nerves show in her voice. “Let me go. I don’t have anything to do with this. Please. Just let me go.”

Debba and Lilly both looked at her in disbelief.

“Please,” Clare said.

“You’ll just call 911,” Renee said.

“No. I swear to you, before God, on my priestly vows, I won’t call 911.”

“Clare!” Debba’s voice was outraged. Renee Rouse glanced at her. Clare could have kissed her.

“Okay,” the doctor’s wife said. “You may go.”

The walk across the road and up the gravel drive was one of the longest in her life. As soon as she slid into the Shelby, she yanked her bag off the floor and dumped its contents on the seat next to her. There it was. Her cell phone.