Pocketful of Pearls (8 page)

“Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe some hinges need to come off some closed doors around here.”

Her mother moved fretfully. “I don’t understand one word you’re saying. If you’re not going to help me and get me a cold cloth,
then go back to your room until you can talk sense. Goodness knows I don’t want you behaving this way when John and Margaret
and Phinehas get home.”

“Mother, look me in the eye and tell me you don’t know what Phinehas has been doing to me. That he’s been using me as his
mistress for years. Tell me you didn’t know.”

Elsie stared at her. “What?”

“Tell me why you never once came to help me. Tell me that you never heard him in my room. Or saw him touch me.” Her voice
shook.

“You are saying wicked, wicked things,” her mother hissed. “How dare you say such things about a man of God?”

“He isn’t a man of God. He puts on that holy face on Sunday and you’d never know how much he hurt me Saturday night. He raped
me for the first time when I was fourteen, Mom. And he’s continued to do it every time he visited. You keep inviting him back
and he keeps doing it. I don’t set my affections on the things of this earth, Mom, but I sure wish you would.”

Elsie clapped her hands over her ears. “I will not allow you to say such things!”

Dinah pulled her mother’s soft hands away and hung onto them. “You’re going to put a stop to it now. I want you to send him
away and never let him stay here again. I want you to stand up for me for once in your life. Please, Mom.”

“You are a wicked, sinful girl. You should be praying for him, not saying such horrible things. If you let things like that
into your mind, you let them into the Kingdom. Think about that, Dinah!”

Dinah flung Elsie’s hands to the coverlet. “It’s already in the Kingdom. You’ve known about it right from the start. You never
stopped him when we had our private little Bible studies together, did you? You and Dad never let yourselves hear him going
down the hall to my room at night.”

Her mother’s mouth worked, but no sounds came out. Her eyes were wide with shock and betrayal.

“It hurts, Mom.” Dinah fisted a hand over her heart. “It hurts worse than anything, to know that you could have stopped it
and didn’t. What I’d like to know is, why?” She dragged in a breath and said it at last. “Why didn’t you act like a proper
mother and protect me? Do you hate me that much?”

Elsie’s eyes bulged, and her skin, normally pale from too much time indoors, drained of color even further and turned gray.
“You—woman—stop it—” she croaked.

“First you send Tamara away, and now it’s my—Mom?”

With a groan that sounded nothing like the invalid moan she’d pretended to make earlier, Elsie toppled sideways. Her head
clunked the nightstand with a dreadful sound that brought Dinah out of the red haze of rage.

“Mom?”

Staring, horrified, at her mother’s awkwardly bent body, Dinah found the phone by touch alone and dialed 9-1-1.

F
OR THE SECOND
time that evening, a screaming sound brought Matthew up off the bed. He dashed over to the window that overlooked the yard.
This time it wasn’t a human. The ambulance skidded to a stop in the gravel and EMTs leaped out, prepared their equipment,
and hustled up the steps.

Not Dinah.

Then he saw her silhouetted in the light from the kitchen doorway as she let them in. He watched and waited, wondering what
in the world was happening, wondering if he should go and offer his help. Ten minutes later they came out again with someone
on a gurney.

He had no idea who it was, but it wasn’t Dinah.

Matthew wasn’t quite sure what made him think she’d need an ambulance. She’d seemed calm enough after they’d buried Sheba’s
. . . well, after they’d buried Sheba. But he knew enough about fear and grief to believe that a calm exterior could hide
towering agony, made worse because it couldn’t be shown. Oh yes, he knew all about that.

But it wasn’t just the volcano of emotion he’d seen inside a woman who looked fragile enough to be damaged by a single touch.
No, it was this whole ranch. Anxiety and rage seemed to hover over it, even when the sun came out from behind the cloud cover
that bumped up hard against the mountain. Look at the last few days. There had been a death, a funeral, a wake, a murder of
sorts, and now some other tragedy in the form of a medical emergency.

He was getting a little tired of hiding while hell broke loose all around him. He pulled a jacket off a nail in the tack room—probably
her father’s—and crossed the yard to the house.

“Dinah?” He knocked gently on the screen door, and when no one answered, pushed it open. “Are you here?”

No reply.

He entered the kitchen cautiously, though he knew her relatives had not returned yet. “Dinah?”

Moving more quickly now, he looked into the dining room, the living room, and even the bathroom and the spare bedroom. Then
he climbed the stairs, worry blooming under his breastbone with each step into the upper darkness of the house. A quick look
in all the rooms proved them to be empty, but the disarray of the fussy embroidered pillows and the quilted coverlet of the
one in the back told him that it might have been her mother who had gone in the ambulance.

He was positive she had not gone with it. The car was in town with her aunt and uncle. That meant she had to be here somewhere.

In the front bedroom, where a single suitcase lay on the floor, its contents as orderly and neat as a shop window, he glanced
out at the view. The moon had come up, and by its light he saw a small, dark figure march across the road in the direction
of the river.

In just that way—grimly, a woman on a mission—she had walked away from him across the field, and mayhem had been the result.

“Oh, no,” he breathed. “Lord, what is she doing? Help me get there first, dear Father.”

He took the stairs three at a time and burst out the front door without bothering to close it behind him. He made a few seconds’
time on the asphalt of the road, but the trees that stood between him and the river, though sparse and thin, held him up.
The tussocky grass and the uneven banks where the river had changed direction deceived and tripped him.

He was still fifty yards away when, in the hard, silver moonlight, he saw her kick off her ugly, low-heeled shoes and toss
her barn jacket on the sandbar.

“No, Lord. Don’t let her. Please don’t let her do it.”

His breath scraped in his chest like shards of ice, and he heaved and gasped as he staggered toward the sandbar. He wasn’t
going to make it in time.

“Dinah!”

The rushing of the river drowned out his voice, and she waded in without glancing back, totally focused on whatever dreadful
thoughts were in her mind.

The water burst around her knees and then her thighs, pulling relentlessly on her dress. She could hardly keep her footing.
Then she spread her arms wide and dropped into the current as gracefully and inevitably as a tree falling.

There was no room in his head for a thought of his own danger. Matthew dragged in as much air as his lungs could hold, and
plunged in after her.

DINAH HAD A
split second to hope that her head would hit a big rock right away before the underwater roar of the river filled her ears
and somersaulted her like a rag doll. Something whacked her ankle, hard, and she fought the temptation to curl into a ball
to minimize the damage.

It didn’t matter what happened to her body. Should she breathe in, was the question. She was holding her breath by instinct,
but that defeated the whole point.

Ouch! Her shoulder scraped the gravel on the bottom and she felt a sudden freedom that meant the sleeve had given way. Her
skirts had reversed up over her head.

Can’t breathe. Need air.

No. Breathe water. It will be over soon.

Something grabbed the fabric wrapped around her neck and jerked violently. Oh, good. A snag would hold her down.

Over soon.

Alive.
Whatever was holding onto her was alive. Animal?

She pushed at it and it pushed back, and suddenly her head broke the surface, but fabric was pasted to her face like a mask.
With a groan, she tried to drag in a breath and got a mouthful of wet material instead.

“Dinah! Stop it!” somebody said, and suddenly she was upended face down, her cheek mashed into cold gravel. The sopping mask
was torn away and she gasped and coughed, heaving on the ground, sucking in sand and pine needles with every breath.

She coughed and spat out a mouthful of water.

“Are you all right? Can you speak?”

Matthew.

A burst of anger so hot it was like a blood transfusion rocketed through her, and she pushed herself up on both hands. On
all fours like an animal, she glared at him.

“What did you do that for?” She’d meant to scream, but it came out as a hoarse whisper. “Leave me alone.”

She pushed herself to her feet and staggered toward the water. Rocks. That’s what they did in the old days, didn’t they? Weighted
themselves down with rocks. She should have thought of that before.

She glanced around to choose a couple of likely ones, but he tackled her around the waist and dragged her back. He sat her
forcefully on a beached log.

“I will not allow you to do this!”

She’d never seen him angry. He had seemed so gentle and unassuming and hopeless about life. She hadn’t known he had it in
him.

Well, well. Hinges were popping off doors all over today.

“If you can’t think about yourself,” he said, “at least think about your poor mother. And your relatives. What do you think
they’ll do with you gone?”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t care. And they don’t care about me.” She slid off the log, but he grabbed her and sat her down
on it again.

“Don’t touch me!”

“Don’t go near the river again, and I won’t.”

“Who do you think you are, telling me what to do?”

That stopped him.

And then she was sorry. His eyes filled with pain.

“I thought I was your friend. If you don’t care about your family, at least spare a thought for me.”

“Why should I? I never knew you before this week.”

Pain flickered over his face. Turning away, he crossed the sandbar and retrieved her shoes and barn jacket. She pushed sopping
hair out of her face and realized that her underwater journey had only been a matter of twenty or thirty feet. The river took
a curve around the bar, and the eddy had probably been the only thing that had prevented them both from washing all the way
down to Hamilton Falls. It had pulled them in here and allowed Matthew to find his footing.

She hadn’t thought about the geography. She should have planned it better and gone upriver a bit, to the canyon and rapids.
All those big rocks would have done the job properly.

Matthew crunched and squished his way back to her and wrapped the jacket around her shoulders. The contrast between the heavy
fabric and her clammy skin made her realize how cold the night was. The air fell into her lungs like snow.

“Come on. We need to get you dry and warm.”

Next time, she’d make sure he was out of the way, and then she’d walk to the canyon.

It felt good to have a backup plan.

THEY LEFT A
twin trail of puddles on the kitchen floor.

“In here.” Matthew pushed open the guest bathroom and turned on the shower. “Get out of these clothes.”

Panic exploded under her ribs, and she wrenched away. “No!”

“Dinah, I’m only trying to—”

“Get away from me.” She slammed the bathroom door in his face.

“I’ll be right out here if you need me. Just don’t try any funny business in that tub.”

She locked the door and stood in the middle of the room, holding her elbows and shivering. She’d felt such a sense of freedom
when the river carried her away. No more feelings. Just the calmness of impending death. And now? Hot, angry tears pooled
in her eyes as she peeled her dress, slip, and underwear away and dropped them in a pile that smelled of river weed and despair.

Stupid man. If she’d wanted to drown in the stupid bathtub she’d have done it ages ago.

Her aunt’s shampoo and lavender-scented soap were in the shower caddy, so she used them. She caught herself inhaling the crisp
scent with a sense of surprise. She’d always thought Aunt Margaret smelled like an old lady. Now she wondered if her aunt
took this quiet pleasure in lavender soap, and that was why she used it.

Not the kind of thing you asked Aunt Margaret. She would never admit to pandering to her flesh in such a way.

Dinah rinsed and dried off, and then realized she had nothing to put on.

Was he gone?

She put her ear to the door. Silence. “Mr. Nicholas?”

A voice came from at least a room away. “I would think that the depth of our acquaintance, if not its length, would allow
you to use my given name. I went and got your robe. It’s on the door handle.”

She unlocked the door and kept her body behind it while she felt the handle outside. Her fingers encountered soft cotton and
she dragged it into the bathroom. She re-locked the door and wrapped the pink-and-white sprigged dressing gown tightly around
herself.