Bent Road - Lori Roy [120]
“I did think about it,” she says. “In the very beginning.”
“Anyone would have,” Celia says, pausing for a moment before beginning to dig and stir again. “You thought you were alone.”
“But I never would have done it. Not to Elisabeth.”
Celia pushes aside the bowl, stands and takes the paper bag. “Do you want to me take care of this?”
“I never could have used it,” Ruth says, crossing her hands on the table. “Don’t even know why I kept so much.” She looks up at Celia. “Things never seemed quite so bad when no one was around to see.” She tucks her hair behind her ears, a motion that makes her look like a young girl again. “But then you all moved back, and I was so ashamed for you to know. All the drinking and the times he hurt me. You all made it”—she pauses—“more real. That’s when I knew I could never let my own child see those things.” She shakes her head and pulls two small brown bottles from her apron pocket. “These will need to go, too.”
“Celia’s right, child,” Reesa says. With a teaspoon, she scoops a dumpling and dips it into the simmering broth. “Any sane woman would have done the same. You were taking care.”
Celia picks up the bottles, holds them in one hand and raises her eyebrows because a smile doesn’t seem appropriate. Ruth gives her a nod, and Celia carries the bottles and the bag from the kitchen.
Walking across the gravel drive toward Arthur and Daniel, Celia wonders when wedge root is in season. Ruth must have gathered it months ago. Surely it didn’t grow under the cover of snow. No, she must have thought ahead. In the early weeks, when she considered how she could end her pregnancy, she could have found the plant growing along every ditch in the county, but by the time her plan changed and she needed to gather enough to kill a six-foot-four-inch 220-pound man, the wedge root must have been harder to come by. How much wedge root did it take to boil out enough oil to fill these two small bottles? When Ruth pulled the bag and bottles from her suitcase, Celia never asked her how she would have done it or if it mattered that Ray wasn’t the one who killed Julianne Robison. Would she have seeped the wedge root with Ray’s morning coffee over weeks and months until it eventually killed him? Would one strong dose of the oil, maybe mixed with the base of a nice chicken stock, have done the trick? No, Celia never asked.
Outside the screened door, Evie sits on the top step, cradling the Virgin Mary to her chest. As Celia passes by, she touches the top of Evie’s head. Evie hugs the small statue with both arms and slips inside before the screened door falls closed. Walking toward Arthur and Daniel, she thinks that there was a time when she would have asked Daniel to step away. When he was a boy, just a year ago, afraid of the monster at the top of Bent Road, she would have asked him to leave. But not today, because now he is a man.
It’s still there, that lazy bend in the fence line a quarter mile northeast of Reesa’s house, except the fields are no longer empty like they were on the night that the Scott family arrived in Kansas. That spring, the short sprouts that had lain dormant all winter began to grow and when the weather warmed and the spring rains came, those sprouts grew and became shiny, green stalks that carpeted the fields. More time passed, and under the summer sun, the green stalks faded to yellow. The bristly heads are heavy and soon the farmers will harvest their golden crops, leaving the fields bare once again. As autumn draws closer, the tumbleweeds will begin to dry out. Their woody stems will turn brittle and break near the ground. They’ll tumble and roll and the curve at the top of Bent Road will scoop them up.
Celia knows now to slow near the top of that hill. She edges toward the shoulder in case of oncoming trucks that she might not see in time. She knows where home is and which way to turn should Arthur’s truck slip over the top of the next hill unseen.
Sliding in between Arthur and Daniel, Celia rolls down the top of the paper sack until it’s closed good and tight. Heat spills