Dream a Little Dream (5 page)

She heard a curse, and Gabe reappeared, a scowl twisting his lips. He planted his hands on his hips, and as he stared down at her, she grew conscious of his height. She was five feet seven, but he made her feel small and disturbingly defenseless.

“In all the years I’ve known my brother, this is the only time I’ve seen him turn anybody away.”

“It’s been my experience, Bonner, that even good Christians have a limit. For a lot of them, I seem to be it.”

“I don’t want you here!”

“Now there’s a news flash.”

His expression darkened. “This place isn’t safe for a kid. He couldn’t hang around here.”

Was he weakening? She made up a quick lie. “I have a place to keep him.”

Edward burrowed closer to her side.

“If I hired you, it would only be for a couple of days, just until I find someone else.”

“Understood.” She struggled to hide her excitement.

“All right,” he snarled. “Eight o’clock tomorrow. And you’d better be ready to work your butt off.”

“I can do that.”

His scowl deepened. “It’s not my responsibility to find you a place to stay.”

“I have a place.”

He regarded her suspiciously. “Where?”

“None of your business. I’m not helpless, Bonner, I just need a job.”

The phone rang on the wall. He went over to answer it, and she listened to a one-sided conversation that dealt with a delivery problem. “I’ll come in and straighten it out,” Mr. Charm finally announced.

He hung up the phone, then crossed over to the door and held it open. He didn’t do it as a courtesy, she knew, but only to get rid of her.

“I have to go into town. We’ll talk about where you’re going to stay when I get back.”

“I told you it’s taken care of.”

“We’ll talk when I get back,” he snapped. “Wait for me over by the playground. And find something to do with your kid!”

He stalked out.

She had no intention of staying around long enough for him to find out that she was sleeping in her car, so she waited until he drove off then headed for her Impala. While Edward napped in the backseat, she washed herself, then laundered their dirty clothes in a small tributary of the French Broad River that ran through the grove. Afterward, she changed into her tattered jeans and an old melon-colored T-shirt. Edward woke up, and the two of them sang silly songs and told ancient knock-knock jokes while they hung their wet laundry on low branches near the car.

The late-afternoon shadows lengthened. She had no food left, and she couldn’t postpone the trip into town any longer. With Edward at her side, she walked along the highway until they had left the drive-in behind, then she stuck out her thumb as a late-model Park Avenue approached.

It was driven by a retired couple from St. Petersburg who were summering in Salvation. They chatted pleasantly with her and were sweet to Edward. She asked them to drop her off at the Ingles grocery store on the edge of town, and they waved as they drove off. She was thankful they hadn’t recognized her as the infamous Widow Snopes.

Her luck didn’t hold, however. She’d only been in the grocery store for a few moments when she noticed one of the produce clerks staring at her. She concentrated on choosing a pear that wasn’t overly bruised from the mark-down rack. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a gray-haired woman whispering to her husband.

Rachel had changed so much that she wasn’t recognized as often now as she had been in the first year after the scandal, but this was Salvation, and these people had seen her in person, not just on the television screen. Even without her teased hair and spindly high heels, they knew who she was. Swiftly she moved on.

In the bread aisle, a neatly dressed woman in her mid-forties with severely cut dyed black hair put down a pack of Thomas’ English muffins and stared at Rachel as if she were looking at the devil.

“You.” She spat out the word.

Rachel remembered Carol Dennis immediately. She had begun as a Temple volunteer and eventually worked her way to the top, ending up as one of the cadre of loyal followers who served as aides to Dwayne. Deeply religious, Carol had both adored and been intensely protective of him.

When his troubles had become public, Carol had never been able to accept the fact that a man who preached the Gospel as passionately as G. Dwayne Snopes was corrupt, so she shifted the blame for his downfall to Rachel.

She was almost unnaturally thin, with a sharp nose and pointed chin. Her eyes were as dark as her dyed hair, her skin flawless and pale. “I can’t believe you’ve come back.”

“It’s a free country,” Rachel snapped.

“How can you show your face here?”

Her defiance faded. She handed Edward a small loaf of whole-wheat bread. “Would you carry this for me?” She began to move on.

The woman noticed Edward, and her face softened. She stepped forward and bent toward him. “I haven’t seen you since you were a baby. What a nice-looking young man you are. I’ll bet you miss your daddy.”

Edward had been accosted by strangers before, and he didn’t like it. He ducked his head.

Rachel tried to get by, but Carol quickly angled her cart to block the aisle. “God tells us we should love the sinner and hate the sin, but it’s difficult in your case.”

“I’m sure you’ll manage, Carol, a devout woman like yourself.”

“You’ll never know how many times I’ve prayed for you.”

“Save your prayers for someone who wants them.”

“You’re not welcome here, Rachel. A lot of us gave our lives to the Temple. We believed, and we’ve suffered in ways you could never understand. Our memories are long, and if you think we’ll stand by and let you flaunt yourself here, you’re very wrong.”

Rachel knew it was a mistake to reply, but she couldn’t help defending herself. “I believed, too. None of you have ever understood that.”

“You believed in yourself, in your own needs.”

“You know nothing about me.”

“If you showed any remorse, all of us could forgive you, but you still don’t have any shame, do you, Rachel?”

“I have nothing to be ashamed about.”

“He confessed his sins, but you never would. Your husband was a man of God, and you ruined him.”

“Dwayne ruined himself.” She pushed the cart out of the way, and nudged Edward forward.

Before she could get away, however, a teenage boy came slouching around the end of the aisle holding several bags of potato chips and a six-pack of Mountain Dew. He was slightly built, with an unkempt dirty-blond crew cut and three earrings. His jeans were baggy, and a rumpled blue shirt hung open over a black T-shirt. He came to a stop as he saw Rachel. For a moment his face was blank, and then his expression hardened with hostility.

“What’s she doing here?”

“Rachel’s come back to Salvation,” Carol said coldly.

Rachel remembered that Carol was divorced and had a son, but she would never have recognized this boy as the quiet, conservative-looking child she vaguely recalled.

The teenager stared at her. He hardly looked like a model of religious devotion, and she couldn’t understand such naked animosity.

She quickly turned away and discovered she was shaking as she headed into the next aisle. Before she’d gone far, she heard Carol’s angry voice. “I’m not buying all that junk food for you.”

“I’ll buy it myself!”

“No, you won’t. And you’re not going out with those loser friends of yours tonight, either.”

“We’re just going to a movie, and you can’t stop me.”

“Don’t you lie to me, Bobby! You had liquor on your breath the last time you came home. I know exactly what you and your friends are doing!”

“You don’t know shit.”

Edward looked up at Rachel, his eyes startled. “Is she that boy’s mom?”

Rachel nodded and hurried him to the end of the aisle.

“Don’t they love each other?”

“I’m sure they do. But they’ve got problems, pup.”

As she finished her shopping, she was conscious of the attention she was attracting, which ranged from puzzled glances to condemning murmurs. Even though she’d expected animosity, the extent of it upset her. Three years might have passed, but the people of Salvation, North Carolina, hadn’t forgiven a thing.

As she and Edward walked along the highway carrying their small supply of food, she tried to understand Bobby Dennis’s reaction to her. He and his mother were clearly at odds, so she doubted that he was simply reflecting Carol’s feelings. Besides, his antipathy had seemed more personal.

She stopped thinking about Bobby as she spotted a large grandpa car with Florida plates, the only kind she dared stick her thumb out for. A widow from Clearwater driving a maroon Crown Victoria stopped and took them back to the drive-in. As Rachel stepped out of the car, she turned her foot and the frail straps on the right sandal snapped. The sandals were beyond repair, and now she had only one pair of shoes left. Another loss.

Edward fell asleep just before nine o’clock. She sat barefoot on the trunk of the Impala with an old beach towel wrapped around her shoulders and gazed down at the crumpled magazine photo that had brought her back. She carefully unfolded it and, flicking on the flashlight she carried with her, looked down into the face of Gabe’s older brother, Cal.

Although they bore a strong resemblance, Cal’s rugged features had been softened by an almost goofy look of happiness, and she wondered if his wife, the attractive, rather scholarly-looking blond pictured smiling at his side, was responsible. They’d been photographed in Rachel’s old house, a vast, overly ornate mansion on the other side of Salvation. It had been confiscated by the federal government to help cover Dwayne’s unpaid taxes, and it had stood vacant until Cal had bought it and its contents when he was married.

The picture had been taken in Dwayne’s former study, but it wasn’t sentimentality that had made her rip it from the magazine. Instead, it was the object she’d spotted in the background of the photograph. Sitting on the bookcases directly behind Cal Bonner’s head was a small, brass-bound leather chest, barely the size of half a loaf of bread.

Dwayne had bought the chest about three and a half years ago from a dealer who kept her husband’s expensive purchases anonymous. Dwayne had coveted it because it had once belonged to John F. Kennedy—not that Dwayne had been a Kennedy fan, but he loved everything associated with the rich and famous. In the weeks before his death, as the legal net had tightened around him, she’d frequently seen Dwayne gazing at the chest.

One afternoon he’d called her from a landing strip north of town and, in a panicked voice, told her he was about to be arrested. “I—I thought I’d have more time,” he’d said, “but they’re coming to the house tonight, and I have to get out of the country. Rachel, I’m not ready! Bring Edward to me so I can say good-bye before I leave. I have to say good-bye to my son. You have to do this for me!”

She’d heard the desperation in his voice and knew he was afraid she wouldn’t comply because of her bitterness over the way he’d ignored their child. Except for Edward’s televised baptism, which had been the most watched program in the history of the Temple ministry, Dwayne had shown little interest in being a father.

Her disillusionment with her husband had started soon after they were married, but it wasn’t until her pregnancy that she’d discovered the extent of his corruption. He’d justified his avarice by telling her he needed to let the world see the riches God bestowed on the faithful. Still, she wouldn’t deny him what might be his last contact with his son.

“All right. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“And I want—I want to take something from home with me, as a reminder. Bring the Kennedy chest, too. And my Bible.”

She understood about the Bible, which was a keepsake from his mother. But Rachel was no longer the naive Indiana country girl he’d married, and his request for the Kennedy chest made her instantly suspicious. At least five million dollars from the Temple ministry were unaccounted for, and it wasn’t until she’d broken the small brass lock and assured herself the chest was empty that she did as he’d asked.

She’d sped along the mountain roads toward the landing strip with two-year-old Edward strapped into his car seat sucking on Horse’s ear. Dwayne’s mother’s Bible lay on the seat next to her, and the small leather chest sat on the floor. By the time she’d arrived, however, it was too late to reach her husband.

Law enforcement had decided not to wait until nightfall to arrest him, and, acting on a tip, the local police and county sheriff had headed for the airfield. But Dwayne had spotted them approaching and taken off. Two deputies forced her out of the Mercedes and confiscated everything, even Edward’s car seat. Afterward, one of them drove her home in a squad car.

It wasn’t until the next morning that she received word that a plane crash had killed her husband. Not long after, she was evicted from the house with little more than the clothes on her back. It was her first lesson in exactly how unkind the world could be to the widow of a crooked televangelist.

She hadn’t seen the Kennedy chest again, not until five days ago when she’d stumbled on the photograph of Cal Bonner and his wife in a
People
magazine that had been left at the Laundromat. For three years she’d wondered about that chest. When she’d broken the lock, she’d given the interior no more than a cursory examination. Later, she remembered how heavy it had been and wondered if it could have contained a false bottom. Or maybe a safe-deposit key lay concealed beneath the green felt lining.

As she drew the old beach towel tighter to ward off the night chill, she was filled with bitterness. Her son was sleeping in the backseat of a broken-down car after eating a peanut-butter sandwich and an overly ripe pear, yet five million dollars were missing. It was money that belonged to her.

Even after she paid off the last of Dwayne’s creditors, there would be a few million left, and she intended to use it to buy security for her son. Instead of yachts and jewels, she dreamed of a small house in a safe neighborhood. She wanted to watch Edward eat decent food and wear clothing that wasn’t threadbare. She’d send him to good schools and buy him a bicycle.