Darlene Graham - An Accidental Family

The old woman flicked on the safety and the shotgun disappeared into the folds of her robe. “Cain’t be too cautious these days. Grace Chapman.” She thrust out a knobby hand and Seth gently clasped it.

“Seth Whitman,” he said.

“Whitman? A cop? You related to that cop that was killed out near the Rune Stones some years back?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He kept his eyes off Rainey, who stood hovering near the boys in the porch shadows. He didn’t want to see the look on her face if she added two and two. He didn’t want anybody’s pity over Lane’s death. It was long past. There was nothing he could do about it now except avenge it. And that was exactly what he intended to do.

Gran turned on Rainey. “You look awful, girl. Is everything all right?”

“Not exactly.” Rainey sighed.

“What are you doing here with the law at this ungodly hour? And who are these youngsters?”

While Rainey introduced the boys and explained that they were her charges from Big Cedar Camp, and what had happened, Seth took stock of Rainey’s Granny Grace.

The old lady was pretty much what he had expected. In his police work, he had often encountered elderly women exactly like her, tucked back into these hills. They tended gardens they’d scratched out in their beloved rocky soil, they babied paltry livestock, they fashioned stunning quilts from the scraps of their lives, and they basically preferred to be left alone.

The ones he’d seen in Tenikah rolled their decrepit cars into town once or twice a week to attend church, visit the post office or buy provisions. They reported trouble to the police like faithful little tattletales, appearing at the station to shout into the microphone in the glass security window. So-and-so was burning leaves despite the burn ban, or a newspaper stand lay facedown in the creek with the cash box pried open, or one of old man Goodner’s cows was loose out on the highway again. As the junior officer on the force, Seth often had to follow up on all this nonsense.

“Land sakes! That’s awful!” Gran said when Rainey reached a stopping place. “Come inside then, all of you.”

“Ma’am?” Seth halted their progress. “What’s behind your place?”

Granny turned. “The house sits at the top of the ridge. The backside drops off into the river.”

The place might actually work. When he got everybody settled, Seth decided he’d walk the perimeter, check for a lookout.

The two women continued to talk nonstop as Seth and the boys followed the tiny lady inside the house. She lit an antique oil lantern and set it in the middle of a round kitchen table with a red-checked oilcloth spread on it.

Seth felt as if he’d stepped back in time. The boys, he could see, were stunned by these unusual surroundings, or maybe they were just too tired to care. Likely none of them had ever seen a place like this, except in the movies. Even Dillon seemed subdued, taking in the cluttered room with wide-eyed fascination.

But Seth had been in houses like Grace’s plenty of times, though never one quite this solidly frozen in time. The kitchen where the six of them stood in an awkward ring, softly lit by the glow of the lantern, was little more than a box lined with crooked white cabinets yellowing with age. Clean but dented pans were stacked on an actual wood-burning, cast-iron cook-stove. A home-sewn feedsack curtain concealed the guts of a huge enamel sink where bunches of enormous carrots with the green tops still attached lay at an angle. All manner of dried herbs lined the narrow windowsill, tied in neat bundles or propped up in tiny colored-glass medicine bottles.

Covering every inch of wall space were animal skins and American flags, crosses and family photos, postcards from trips to far-flung places like Eureka Springs, Arkansas. A small refrigerator, run off the gas-powered generator, Seth assumed, was plastered with all manner of cheap magnets. Some were frames with tiny pictures of a little girl in them. Rainey? A bowl of fresh peaches ripened in the corner of the counter next to a large bin that was stamped Bread.

It looked like the kind of place that had produced meal after hearty meal for decades and didn’t know how to stop. In fact, Seth imagined there were cookies resting under the embroidered dish towel that covered a plate in the corner.

“So, we have to have a place to hide the boys,” Rainey said, finishing up her story, “We have to keep them safe until Seth can catch those men. I hate to put you in a fix, Gran, but I couldn’t think of anyplace else to go. I hope you can help us.”

“You know you can always come to me if you’ve got trouble, honey,” Gran said. “I bet you boys are hungry as horses.”

She reached for the towel-covered plate and folded back the corner. Sure enough. Cookies.

“Sit down, then, and eat.” Gran encouraged them with a sweeping gesture and the boys tumbled into the dinette chairs. “You should eat, too, Rainey,” she said, eyeing her granddaughter’s slender frame. “Looks like you’re still not eating enough to amount to a hill of beans. You look plumb peaked, matter of fact.”

“I’m just tired, Gran. It’s been a long night.”

Rainey leaned her hips against the counter edge and Seth positioned himself at a distance, one shoulder propped against the doorjamb.

“You’re welcome,” Gran chirped as she passed the boys the cookies, “you’re very welcome,” even though none the three had uttered a word of thanks.

When Granny held the platter out to Seth he said, “None for me, thanks.” He was impatient to get everybody settled in so he could check over the place and begin his watch.

While the boys ate greedily, Grace poured milk into cut-glass tumblers, then seated herself in the last chair. She and Rainey resumed a carefully worded interchange, back and forth, about the boys, about their various histories, their various problems, about what had happened out there in the woods to land them all up here.

While the women talked, Seth laid his plans. He’d go into town tomorrow, before the sun was up, so there’d be no chance of Lonnie and Nelson tracing his departure from here. There were questions to ask, discrepancies to clear up. The name Howard gnawed at him.

Even as he mulled over the situation, his thoughts, and his eyes, kept straying back to Rainey Chapman. The woman was a surprise. Not because of her stunning good looks. The surprise was how he felt in her presence.

In his days as a rodeo champion he’d grown accustomed to women hanging around. And cops, he’d quickly discovered, had to practically beat ’em off with a stick. Women from as far away as Muskogee and Tulsa seemed to gravitate to him. Nice woman with pretty hair and soft voices. Interesting, smart, independent women. Reporters. Politicians. Teachers. Nurses. Other cops. All of them were, as far as Seth was concerned, attractive. As he and Lane used to say, “pretty little things.” But none of them had that spark, that something unique enough to hold his heart. He supposed that was because none of them knew the real Seth. He’d never told a single one of them the truth about what tortured him, what kept him awake nights. And he wasn’t of a mind to share.

Deep down inside, he harbored the conviction that getting all tangled up with a woman, telling her the truth about what drove him, might even require him to change. What woman would want a man who was driven by vengeance? But Seth had no intention of giving up his quest. Certainly not now, when he was within striking distance.

But even so, as he watched Rainey’s movements in the cozy glow of the lantern, he felt the kind of keyed-up fascination that he thought he had left behind with his youth. Not since KayAnn, in fact, had Seth seen a woman this gorgeous. But KayAnn was trouble. Unlike his brother, Seth had had the sense to resist KayAnn’s blatantly female charms. And every time he tried to talk sense to Lane, they’d ended up fighting about it, until finally the subject of KayAnn Rawls became sorely off-limits. Only when he’d read the diary he found in Lane’s things after his death did Seth begin to understand his brother’s obsessive protectiveness of KayAnn. And only now, looking at Rainey Chapman, could he imagine feeling the same way himself.