The Virgin of Small Plains

  Verna nodded. She picked up a fork and poked gently at the piece of pie she hadn’t eaten. “Are you going to see him?”

  Abby blurted, “I already have, Verna.”

  The older woman looked up at her and seemed to read something in the flush of Abby’s complexion and the embarrassed lowering of her eyes. “Does Patrick know Mitch is back?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does he know you’ve been with him?”

  “No.” Abby wondered if Verna actually meant what it sounded like she meant, and if so, how she’d guessed. And she was puzzled by the anxious look on Verna’s face. “Why?”

  Patrick and Rex’s mother stood up and started busily picking up plates and silverware. “Because I say it’s none of his business,” she said with uncharacteristic sharpness, “even if I am his mother.”

  “Verna, Patrick told me he was there the night Nathan and Rex found the Virgin.”

  Dishes clattered into the sink as if they had slipped out of Verna’s hands.

  “Why did you tell everybody he wasn’t there?” Abby asked her.

  By “you,” she meant Verna, Nathan, and Rex.

  Verna took her time filling the sink with water before she turned around, with a dish towel in her hands. “We shouldn’t have done that, Abby, and I hope you won’t ever tell anybody we did. But there was Patrick, always in trouble of one kind or another. And he had just flunked out of school. And there was that poor murdered girl, and she was found on our property. And we were just afraid people might suspect him.”

  “Suspect Patrick? Why would anybody do that, Verna?”

  But Patrick’s mother turned around to begin washing dishes as if she had to get every last bit of invisible bacteria off of them. “Because people are just that way, Abby. Because they need somebody to blame.”

  “Verna?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did Nadine ever tell you why Mitch left the way he did?”

  Finally, Verna turned around again, but this time she had a bit of a smile for Abby. “Let me put it this way, Abby. Nadine never told me a reason I ever believed. Not for one minute. That boy was crazy in love with you, just like you were with him. I don’t think he wanted to get away from you, I think she wanted to get him away from you, and not because it was you. She had bigger ambitions for him.” Verna’s voice turned a little tart. “And from what I hear, he has pretty much fulfilled them.”

  “But why did they make him go then, Verna? Why then, of all times?”

  Verna’s kind voice clouded over again. “You mean, not just because he’d come in late from your house that night? Well, they had a teenage boy, too, Abby. And Mitch was over here nearly as much as Rex and Patrick were. Maybe they were worried people might suspect him. I think a lot of us with teenage boys were a little worried that winter. Like I said, people need somebody to blame.”

  “But nobody would have blamed Mitch. He didn’t even know her, Verna.”

  “You don’t know that, Abby.”

  “What do you mean, I don’t know that?”

  “You don’t know who she was,” Verna reminded her.

  “I know Mitch wouldn’t have killed anybody!” Suddenly Abby felt a little shocked. “Verna? Don’t you know the same thing about Patrick?”

  “Of course I do!” Verna turned to drain the sink. “Of course I do.”

  After their visit, Verna walked her outside to her truck.

  “How’s Nathan?” Abby asked her. He hadn’t come downstairs while Abby was there; Verna had told her that he was upstairs talking on the phone to cattle buyers; now and then Abby had heard the rumble of his bass voice through the floorboards.

  “He’s better,” was the surprising answer. “Quentin found a new drug for him, and he has felt a lot of relief since then.”

  “That’s so great, Verna.”

  The older woman laughed wryly. “You don’t even know.”

  Abby teased, “Must have come from seeing the Virgin.”

  But Verna took it seriously. “Yes, I guess it did.”

  “Really?” Abby didn’t know what to think of this, even though she herself had made a special trip to ask for help in finding J.D. But somehow asking was one thing; actually receiving was something else entirely. “You believe that?”

  “Well, it was right after that that Quentin gave us the new medicine.”

  “Hmm. I guess we never know, do we?”

  Abby turned and looked in the direction of the highway going south.

  “Maybe you’ll see Patrick coming back from Franklin,” Verna said.

  “Franklin?” Abby frowned in surprise. “Patrick went to Franklin?”

  “That’s where he said he was going. I can’t imagine why. There’s nothing in Franklin except a few falling-down buildings.”

  “I can’t imagine why, either, especially since he told me he was going to Emporia.”

  Verna matched her surprised frown. “That boy,” she said, as if he were still nineteen years old and keeping her up at night from worry.

  “Verna?” Abby suddenly reached out and touched the other woman’s arm. “Is everything okay?”

  “What? Of course it is! Why do you say that, Abby?”

  “I don’t know. You seem a little…”

  “Tense?” Verna’s laugh sounded forced. “Have you seen cattle prices lately? Believe me, they’ve got everybody tense.”

  “Okay.” Abby gave her a hug. “Thanks for the pie and the company.”

  “Any time.” Verna tightened the embrace. “You know that. And Abby? You won’t say anything to anybody about Patrick being home that night, will you? We let it go too long without setting people straight. They’d just think it was strange now.”

  “I won’t say anything, Verna.”

  When Abby got out on the road and looked back, she saw that Verna was still standing in the driveway watching her leave. For some reason, it reminded her of the curtain that had dropped in her father’s living room the day before, when he, too, had stood and watched her depart.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Verna walked back into her house a lot more slowly than her heart was beating. She figured that to anybody passing by on the highway, or to Nathan happening to peer down from their bedroom, she would have looked just like she always looked, which was to say, like an ordinary ranch woman walking calmly back into her house as if she had nothing to worry about except whether to wash the supper dishes now or later.

  The truth was, when Abby had driven off in her truck, the sight of her red rear lights disappearing down the highway had filled Verna with an awful, almost unbearable anxiety.

  Was she tense, as she had said to Abby? Tense didn’t even begin to describe it.

  She’d been feeling anxious ever since hearing from Rex that Mitch was back.

  And now Abby said that Patrick wanted her to marry him.

  Verna loved both of Margie’s girls, but she held a special place in her heart for Abby, which was no reflection on Ellen, it was just a fact. There was just something about Abby that hadn’t changed in all these years, a quality of natural goodness she had possessed since the day she was born to Margie and Quentin. Partly it was Abby’s appearance that made people love her, no matter what she did. She was irresistible, with her flyaway hair and her big open smile and the way she stood in front of you with her blue-jeaned legs apart and her hands on her hips and smiling that sweet smile and looking you right in the eye. Partly it was also her way of being mischievous now and then, in ways that startled people, but tended to make them smile, instead of condemn, things that probably nobody but Abby Reynolds could have gotten away with, and maybe not in any place except Small Plains. Like stealing Mitch Newquist’s parrot all those years ago, an act that Margie Reynolds had confided to Verna and that had made them both laugh until they cried at the thought of Nadine overhearing a muffled squawk sometime when she was visiting at the Reynolds’s house.

  But it was also more than any of that, it was also how there was a continu
ing kind of innocence to Abby that time and loss and heartache had not altered very much. It was the look in her blue eyes that told you she could still be shocked, still be hurt, still be trusting, still love somebody wholly with all her heart. It wasn’t right that a girl like that didn’t have anybody better than Patrick to love her…

  Oh God. Verna brought her hand to her mouth. She had just thought a terrible thing about her own son…

  But it was true. And Patrick could be relentless…ruthless…when he wanted something. Usually he didn’t stop until he got it. It could happen that he would wear Abby down, persuade her at some vulnerable moment when she was feeling lonely, or even play on her desire to have children.

  Having Mitch back in town, rubbing salt in those wounds, didn’t help.

  It couldn’t happen. Verna couldn’t allow Patrick to have Abby.

  What kind of person would she be, Verna was forced to ask herself, if she allowed Margie’s girl, a girl like that, to marry a boy whose own mother couldn’t swear he hadn’t killed somebody?

  Until the night the girl’s body was found in their field, Verna had never allowed herself to give serious credence to her greatest fear about her firstborn, which was that Patrick might be capable of anything, might even be one of those people on whom a terrible label is hung, like sociopath. She preferred to think that the very worst that could be said about him was that he was conceited, cocky, thoughtless. Ever since he was a child she had watched him use people, manipulate them, even torment them with his teasing. She had tried her best to instill feeling for other people in Patrick, but over the years Verna had seen precious little evidence that he had a conscience, not like Rex, who was afflicted with almost too much conscience than was good for him. But Verna had also seen that both of her boys were popular, not just Rex; both of them always had friends, had fun, laughed easily…

  Her fears had blossomed on the night when she had uttered what she now thought of as fateful words: “What happened, Rex?”

  Her youngest had sat on the side of her bed, holding his own poor broken fist, and the words had burst out of him, words she’d had to hear even though she had desperately wanted to put her hands over her ears to block them out. First, he told her that they had come upon the frozen body of a dead girl in a pasture.

  “I know her, Mom! I didn’t tell Dad, but I know her. And Pat knows her.”

  Then he had told Verna about being mad because Patrick was running away from his work that summer, about getting in his truck and following his older brother, and about finding him in the Newquists’ country house, bare-chested, barefoot, and in the presence of a girl who used to clean houses for families in town. He told her about how he had blackmailed Patrick into staying away, though he couldn’t swear that Patrick did. He told her about how he, himself, had fallen in love with Sarah Francis, about his visits to see her, to take her things, to help her, to keep her company. He told her about their drive in the darkness, and about finding out that the one she really loved was Mitch. And he told her about how he had thrown that fact in Patrick’s face, knowing it would make Pat furious and jealous.

  It had been obvious to her that Rex was heartbroken over the girl’s death and that his greatest fear was that in making his brother jealous he had contributed to her death. Rex, stunned, guilty, grief-stricken, and only eighteen years old, thought his brother had killed her in a jealous, possessive rage.

  “Pat didn’t tell Dad he knew her, Mom!” Rex had burst out to her.

  “Neither did you, honey,” she managed to point out, as she fought to stay calm even in the fog of her fear and her illness.

  “That’s different!”

  “He’s your brother, Rex.”

  “He’s Patrick, Mom,” Rex had shot back at her.

  Rex’s self-recriminations and his accusations against Patrick had raised submerged and hideous anxieties in Verna’s heart. She didn’t, she couldn’t believe that any son of hers could hurt a girl, no matter how jealous he might be.

  But she didn’t know, she didn’t know…

  Verna stared at what was left of the pie on the plate in front of her.

  She felt as if she might never have an appetite again.

  “Rex,” she had told him all those years ago, “your brother could not have done such a horrible thing to that girl. You must stop thinking such a thing! Put these thoughts away forever, Rex. And don’t ever, ever share them with anybody else. Not even with your father.”

  “If such thoughts bother you again,” she had told him, “come to me.”

  Rex never had. The subject was never again raised between them.

  Verna had never told Nathan about what Rex had said to her. She had let him come into their bedroom much later that night, let him crawl wearily into bed, and whisper to her about finding a body in the field, about taking it to Quentin’s office. And then Nathan had said to her, “She was beaten so bad, Verna, that you could hardly even tell she had a face.”

  Verna had felt an electric jolt when he said that, because Rex hadn’t mentioned anything about her being too disfigured to recognize. In fact, he had recognized her, and he seemed to be positive that Patrick had, too. So how did her sons, her teenage sons, recognize a naked dead girl if they couldn’t see her face?

  Verna had lain awake until dawn, getting sicker by the second, for many reasons.

  There were things she didn’t know. There were things she did not want to know. It had come as a relief when she had been forced to go into the hospital in Emporia, where she could be given drugs that made her sleep, sleep through an investigation that did not include her sons, sleep through the quiet departure of her older boy to another town, another college, and sleep through the funeral and burial of a beautiful girl who’d had a name, who’d had a family, who’d had a life.

  At the kitchen table, Verna put her face in her hands.

  She thought of the dead girl, realizing that’s who she should have been thinking of first, all along. “Thank you for helping my husband with his pain,” Verna prayed silently. “Please forgive us and help us, Sarah.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  It was dark by the time Mitch pulled up in front of the ranch house and parked his car for the last time that day. He pulled out the oversized birdcage he had finally located after driving back into Kansas City, as well as the bags of seed, and the grocery bags of fresh fruit and vegetables to feed J.D. He hadn’t even tried the stores in Small Plains, knowing it was too small a town in which to find a cage this big. “You better appreciate all this, J.D.,” he said as he walked in and turned on the lights. “I’ve driven about two hundred miles today to get it for you.”

  The bird let out a gentle squawk of hello.

  Mitch returned to his car for more packages, and that was when he spotted something that made him pause in mid-step.

  The door to the storm cellar was wide open.

  He thought about just walking over and looking in, but the hair standing up on the back of his neck suggested otherwise. Upon leaving the storm cellar yesterday, he had made sure its only door was closed tight. It had still been shut like that when he had driven away from the house this morning. It was a heavy wooden door that he’d had to work hard to open. No stiff breeze had just happened to blow it ajar.

  Quietly, hurrying, Mitch walked into the house and straight into his parents’ bedroom. Once there, he opened the drawer in the table between his parents’ single beds, to see if his father still kept a firearm there.

  Yes…there it was, small and deadly, and just what he wanted to see.

  He remembered this gun, this specific gun. It had a distinctive black handle and silver barrel, and if he recalled correctly, it had been a birthday gift to his father from Quentin Reynolds and Nathan Shellenberger.

  God only knew how recently the gun had been oiled, or whether the barrel was clean enough to fire a bullet without backfiring into his own chest. It could be that the gun—which was more like an old-West pistol, a collector’s item, th
an a modern gun—had not been fired in twenty years, or more. There were bullets in the chamber, he discovered. Even if it couldn’t shoot straight, it still had the potential for scaring the hell out of somebody, even if it couldn’t kill them.

  There were certain things a person never forgot about the country, Mitch thought.

  One was how to shoot. Another was the stories of strangers who holed up in empty farm and ranch houses, people for whom any port in a storm would do, especially if it was somebody else’s port. By and large, they were people you didn’t want to mess with. They were, occasionally, escaped convicts passing through. It was a wide, empty, lonely countryside. Help could take hours to arrive.

  Mitch quietly walked back outdoors, the pistol at his side.

  Though he had shut the storm cellar door, he supposed that its broken lock hanging loose was as good as a “vacancy” sign on a motel. He imagined how pleased and surprised a visitor might be to find the cellar all fixed up like a small apartment. If somebody was in there now, however, they had been sloppy to leave the door open.

  Or claustrophobic.

  Or it might only mean they had been there and were gone.

  Mitch fervently prayed for that to be the case.

  The grass beneath his shoes was damp, muffling the sound of his approach.

  When he reached the doorway, Mitch took a breath, raised the gun with his right hand, and flipped on the light switch with his left.

  The light revealed the room as he remembered it, with one exception.

  A teenage boy lay asleep in a bedroll on the floor.

  “Up!” Mitch commanded.

  The boy stirred, then shot up until he was sitting up. He was tall and skinny, dark-haired, with a thin face and a sour expression on it. “Wha’ the fuck!”

  “Get up,” Mitch told him. “Slowly.”

  The kid looked more angry than scared. He glared at the gun in Mitch’s hand, then up at Mitch’s face. “Who the fuck are you, and what the fuck you doin’ with my father’s gun?”