Bent Road - Lori Roy [103]
“She’s gone, Ruthie,” Arthur said, dropping the Virgin Mary.
Mother fell backward and scrambled for the two hands that broke off the statue and settled in the soft, dry dirt. She picked up each tiny hand and the rest of the Virgin Mary and started to slide them all into her apron pocket, but it was with Father now.
“She’s gone,” Arthur said.
The ditch was only a ten-minute walk. The elderberries were in full bloom. They’d have plenty for a dozen or more jars, and Eve would feel fit again, fit and fine.
Ruth squints into the fading light, picks up a pearl bead but doesn’t thread it onto her needle.
“Arthur thinks he did it,” she says. “All this time, did you know?”
Sitting next to Ruth on the bed, Celia shakes her head but doesn’t answer.
“He was about Daniel’s age. When Eve died. Just Daniel’s age.”
Celia nods this time and holds a handkerchief to her nose.
“Everyone thought a crazy man killed her,” Ruth says. “Everyone in town. That’s what Father told them. I always assumed Arthur believed the same, but he never did. Even standing there in that shed, wiping up all her blood, he knew the truth. Mother knew, too. After Eve died, after we found her, I told Mother that I thought Eve had done it to herself, trying not to be pregnant. I told her about wedge root and blind staggers, told her that I was sure someone had hurt Eve, hurt her badly, but she’d never tell who. Mother said the truth didn’t matter once a person was dead.”
Ruth lifts her face into the sunlight spilling through the window. “Worst of all, we never told Ray. He was a good man back then. Really, he was. Why did we do that to him? We were so cruel.”
“It wouldn’t have brought her back,” Celia says, her voice cracking at the end. “You were young, all of you. So young.” Clearing her throat and taking out another bead, she says, “Let’s get to work. We’re going to lose this nice light soon.”
“We wasted so many years,” Ruth says, hooking the bead on the tip of her needle.
“It’ll be better now,” Celia says. “Now that everyone knows.”
Ruth takes a stitch, securing the bead. “Yes,” she says. “Better.”
Chapter 30
Letting the powdered sugar frosting drip from the tip of the fork, Evie is sure Julianne would have liked these cinnamon rolls. When she was alive, she must have liked extra icing, too. But she’s been buried underground for a whole day now, and she won’t be eating these rolls or anything else.
Evie should be in school instead of sitting on the counter and stirring the icing for Mrs. Robison’s rolls, but after Julianne’s funeral and all the trouble with Uncle Ray, Mama said Evie and Daniel would stay home until Monday. Mama is afraid to let Evie out of the house ever since Uncle Ray brought her home. She’s been to school only once since Jonathon and Daniel found Julianne dead in Mr. Brewster’s house, and when Evie told Mama that she still got to sit in Julianne’s desk, Mama cleared her throat and said that was enough of school for a while.
The only bad thing about missing school, Evie thinks as she stirs the powdered sugar and milk with a fork, is that the kids in her class will think she’s scared to sit in Julianne’s desk now that Julianne is rotted away and buried underground. But Evie isn’t scared. She picked that desk, even after Miss Olson mixed them all up, because she wanted it especially for her own, and she told every kid at recess that she wasn’t afraid one bit. They told Evie that she’d be next, that whoever killed Julianne, and everyone knew it was either Jack Mayer or her own Uncle Ray,