Pocketful of Pearls (22 page)

The first time she’d done that she’d startled him so badly he’d nearly dropped his cup of tea in his lap. After all, one doesn’t
expect a five-pound bird to suddenly land next to one’s head with an energetic flapping of wings. After he’d got over the
strangeness of it, Matthew began to see why Dinah and her Sheba had bonded so magically. He had never earned the trust of
a bird before, never felt this feathery warmth next to his ear and the relaxing of the feet that told him she was comfortable
enough to sleep. Sometimes she did catnap there, while he listened to the radio in the quiet dimness of the room or read by
lamplight one of the ancient ranching magazines that were stashed in the closet. Then he’d slip his hands under her and carry
her into the barn, where he’d arrange her on her roost for the night.

What would the little hen do when he left? he wondered, as she bubbled a comment and picked a bit of hay out of his hair.
Not that he was leaving, mind you, when Dinah had said herself that she needed him. But at some point her mother would return
and he would need to settle whether he was going to stay or take his small earnings and make his way back to California and
his old life.

Part of him wanted that old life. Part of him missed the summers of research and the rush of September with new classes and
new students and new piles of paperwork. He missed the long talks with Paolo Martinez, the theater prof, on whether John Wilmot,
second earl of Rochester, was a syphilitic clown or a real poet who had been underappreciated during his lifetime and ignored
by history since.

Another part admitted that that life was gone forever. Yes, his name had been cleared and Torrie Parker exposed as mentally
unstable, using him as a stand-in for the father who had abused her. But academic circles were small and tight, and a scandal
like that had spread far and wide even without the help of the newspapers. Technically, he could work if he could get a position.
But why would someone hire an assistant professor who came dragging such baggage when there were hundreds of fresh-faced PhD
lecturers available for half the price?

His options were to stay here on the ranch until the Lord only knew when, hiding from life, or start over again on the lowest
rungs of the academic ladder in an attempt to make the best of it in another state.

Washington, perhaps. Where he could be within visiting distance of Dinah.

Is that what you want?
something deep in his mind whispered.
To visit?

Well, yes. She’s in no shape for anything else.

But what if she were? This Derrick Wilkinson person is already in line, it seems.

She isn’t giving him the time of day.

She gives you the time of day, doesn’t she? More.

During the past few days he’d been exposed to more pain and ugliness than he’d known existed in the days of his youth and
innocence. But then, under the veneer of civilization, it was hard to say what, exactly, was normal. The point was Dinah had
shared with him secrets she’d never told a living soul, and while it had been agonizing for both of them, he could see that
just saying such things aloud was helping to lift the burden somewhat.

He couldn’t flatter himself that being around him was going to cure her. Far from it. But by being a sounding board and drawing
on his experience and research into sexual abuse during the whole awful hearing process, at least he had been able to ask
the right questions. And some questions, at least, might lead to answers for her.

Schatzi made her hookah-pipe sound next to him, as if asking a question of her own.

“What should I do, little one?” he asked, then smiled at himself. Dr. Nicholas, pride of the British university system, talking
to a chicken. Well, she had more sense than many a department chair he’d known. He and Paolo had had their share of laughs
at the head of the humanities department and his idiotic policies.

“What do you think, Schatzi? Shall I ring up old Paolo and give him a coronary?”

Schatzi fluffed her feathers and did not reply, though she kept one eye on him in case the sounds he was making indicated
a treat was in the offing.

Matthew pulled the phone closer and dialed the familiar number.

“Martinez.
Hola.
”

“You’re home. I thought you’d be in rehearsals.”

A stunned silence hummed down the line. “Mateo? Is that you? Where in the world are you? Are you all right?”

He laughed with the sheer pleasure of hearing his friend’s voice again. Paolo, at least, had stuck by him during the worst
of it. Paolo had tried to stop him from leaving, and once that had proved fruitless, had agreed to store Matthew’s books and
his few possessions in his tiny garage until he returned.

“Yes, somewhere southwest of Spokane, Washington, and yes. It’s good to hear your voice, Paolo.”

“You could have heard it sooner. What kind of friend disappears for weeks and doesn’t call? You could have been dead in a
ditch, for all I knew.”

“You sound just like my mother.”

“No surprise there. I’m practicing to be a dad.”

Matthew grinned with delight, though of course Paolo couldn’t see him. “A dad? Is Isabela pregnant?”

“Four months. Which you would have known if you’d stuck around. How are you going to be godfather when you’re somewhere southwest
of Spokane? And how did you get there?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Isabela’s in bed already. I have the time.”

Briefly, Matthew outlined the circumstances that had brought him to Hamilton Falls, leaving out the hunger and the despair,
which would only distress his friend more than he had been already.

“A handyman,” Paolo said at last. “You’re working on a ranch as a hired man? Am I having auditory hallucinations?”

“No, you’re as sane as I am, though that isn’t saying much.”

“Why on earth didn’t you call me,
amigo
? You know I would have come up there and brought you back. Lent you our other car. Done whatever. Not left you to thumb your
way across half the state!”

“I couldn’t.”

“You could have called Pastor Schultz, then. You know there would have been a money order wired up there the same day. You
should hear the prayers, man. A Sunday doesn’t go by that somebody doesn’t lift you up and pray for your safety.”

In a moment of sudden clarity, Matthew saw that his pride had not only been the means of his own destitution, it had put a
burden of worry and concern on the people in the little church under the redwoods where he and Paolo and Isabela worshipped.
He hadn’t meant it to happen, but then, he hadn’t been thinking of anyone but himself, either.

“You’re right.” He sighed. “But I thought if I did things on my own, I wouldn’t be a burden to anyone. Looks as though I was
wrong.”

“It’s no burden to pray for someone we love. Or send them a money order when they’re in trouble. And we won’t even go into
how well equipped you are to be a ranch hand, my friend. You’re not the one who grew up on fifty acres of scrub in New Mexico.”

“As a matter of fact, you’d be surprised.”

“What? You mean you’re slinging hay bales and roping cattle?”

“Well, no, but I am supposed to be managing a stock auction. Somehow. I’m not quite sure about that, yet.”

The silence on the line told him Paolo and Claire Montoya might find something to agree on there.

“But that’s not what I meant,” he went on. “You know I could never understand why, out of all the faculty, Torrie Parker picked
me to work her destruction on.”

“I still don’t understand it. Not when that sonofagun Beiler is still keeping his sexual activity under the radar in the science
department. If anyone deserved destruction by Parker, he did.”

“I think I know now. I think it was part of God’s plan.”

Another pause. “You’re going to have to explain that one to me,” Paolo said at last.

“There’s a woman here. Dinah, my boss. The daughter of the family that owns this ranch. She’s a victim of abuse at the hands
of this preacher type who apparently is the top dog around here.”

“Yes?” Paolo said cautiously.

“She’s in this weird and toxic church that believes this guy, Phinehas, is the mouthpiece of God and infallible.”

“Uh-oh.”

“The poor girl has been his unwilling mistress for—get this, Paolo—ten years. Ten
years
.”

“Why doesn’t she do something about it?”

“I don’t think she can. Not by herself, anyway. But we’ve been talking for days now, nonstop, and it’s all coming pouring
out of her like she’s never had anyone to talk to before in her life.”

“She probably hasn’t. Imagine what the risks would be.”

“Exactly.”

“And this is the plan of God how?”

“As you know, I spent a lot of hours in the research library studying this very thing. I think I can help. At the moment I’m
not doing anything but listening and mucking out chicken manure, but I think somehow I can help.”

“Is that why you’re not on the next plane headed to San Francisco? It seems like you are very involved with this woman.”

“I am, Paolo. But not the way you think. If God went to all the trouble to educate me and bring me here, I’m going to stay
and find out what he wants me to do.”

“If you say so,
mi hermano
. I’ll pray for you.”

“I appreciate that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a chicken on my chair, and I need to put her to bed.”

Amid Paolo’s laughter, Matthew hung up. When he picked up Schatzi and took her out into the barn, he was still smiling.

J
UST BEFORE LUNCH
the next day, the phone rang. Dinah and Matthew were in her dad’s room so Matthew could try on a few of his clothes. In the
middle of the bed, propped up on the pile of shirts, pants, and sweaters, Tamsen lay in her little terry sleeper, kicking
happily and gumming the spotless cuff of what had been Morton Traynell’s best Sunday shirt.

Dinah’s father had been a heavier man, but he and Matthew were about the same height. Dinah held one of his newer shirts up
against Matthew’s chest. “This one might work,” she said. “Try it on while I get the phone. And keep an eye on Tamsen. She
rolled over on the changing table this morning and you never know when she’s going to do it again.”

She jogged into her mother’s room, where the only upstairs extension was, and grabbed it on the fourth ring. “Traynells.”

“Dinah, it’s Auntie Meg.”

Oh, dear. What was going on down in Pitchford? “Hi, Auntie. How is everyone?”

“We’re all fine, dear, including your mom. That’s what I called to tell you. Elsie has been thriving, I’m happy to say, to
the point where she’s getting restless.”

“Is she able to use her hand?”

“Mostly. And except for what they call asymmetric loss of movement in her face, you’d never know she had a stroke. She’s been
doing exceptionally well.”

Dinah was used to feeling ambivalent about a lot of things. The thought of Phinehas had evoked revulsion and fear mixed with
a helpless need for his approval. Same with her dad. But her feelings for her mother had been less those of love than of the
knowledge that she should love her—and felt instead an odd balance of tolerance and dismay, with a little frustration mixed
in.

What kind of horrible person felt like that about her own mother?

The kind that suspected she had collaborated in some awful way with Phinehas. Or, if
collaboration
wasn’t the right word, then at least turned a blind eye to what was going on. The night she had given her mother a stroke
was burned into her memory, as was the knowledge that her mom thought she’d brought Phinehas’s behavior on herself.

Great. Thanks for the support, Mom.

“Dinah, did you hear me?”

“Sorry, Auntie Meg. I’m glad to hear mom is doing so well.”

“Uncle John and I feel she’s ready to come home now, dear.”

What?

“We’ll be driving up after lunch, so we should see you around three.”

“Today?”

“Of course, today.” Margaret’s sharp voice softened into humor. “Why, have you let the place go to rack and ruin since she’s
been gone? Better get out the vacuum.”

Right, as if her mother ever did anything more exhausting than the dusting and the dishes. Dinah was the one who kept the
place spotless, and with the house sitting in a sea of gravel over spring mud, that wasn’t easy.

“Thanks for the warning,” she told her aunt. “See you around three.”

“Don’t you want to talk to your mother?”

“I’ll catch her up when she gets here,” Dinah said hastily. What could she say?
Gee, Mom, Phinehas is gone but he threatened me before he left. Tamara left her baby here, and Linda Bell is spreading gossip
about it as fast as she can. Oh, and I hired a literature professor while you were out.

No, the truth was she had nothing to say to her mother that she wouldn’t see herself once she got here. “I’m off to do the
vacuuming,” she told her aunt. “Bye.”

Matthew looked up when she paused in the bedroom doorway. “What do you think?”

He modeled her dad’s shirt and a pair of the pants they’d bought when the pounds had started falling off him. Matthew had
cinched the waist in with a belt, but on the whole, the corduroy pants fit pretty well.

“Those are good.” She nodded with approval. “So is the shirt. If you turn up the cuffs you won’t notice the sleeves are a
bit short.”

Matthew was putting on weight, she noticed. And not in a bad way, either. He’d lost the hopeless look and stood straight in
front of the mirror as if he liked the person he saw.

She liked that person, too. The very fact that he was so pleased to have these castoff clothes made her smile.

He cocked an eye at her. “Was that Pitchford on the phone? How is your mother?”

Her smile dropped away. “She’s coming home this afternoon.”

“That was fast. It hasn’t been two weeks yet, has it?”

“Two weeks yesterday. Apparently everyone is very pleased over her recovery.”