* * *
Maybe Louisa thought I’d had enough for one day when she made sure I went to bed before she did. She couldn’t possibly have thought I wasn’t going to find out. Maybe she figured I wouldn’t “overreact,” as she put it, if I got a good night’s sleep. Well, she could have figured out that I’d have slept a lot better if the teenage boy who works for her, Brandon, hadn’t brought her Lab puppy, Jessie, home that night. He’d kept the young dog for my sister because Louisa has an aversion to kennels. Brandon had also come daily to look after the place, feed the chickens, and check on Marvelle, Rosie the goat, and Aunt Peace and Aunt Plenty, the barn cats. (Yes, of course, those last three are named for characters from Rose in Bloom. My sister had concluded that Louisa May Alcott had given her characters better names than the actual, historical Transcendentalists had, no matter how much she liked their thinking.) But between Jessie’s exuberant greeting, which she found necessary to repeat when anything roused her from snoozing, and her decision later that the only place she could possibly sleep for the night was with me, on Gary’s bed, I wasn’t exactly relaxed and well rested the next day, when I got the next shock.
* * *
I saw it with my own eyes in the morning. Thanks to Jessie I was awake before Louisa. I’d used the bathroom and just happened to be on my way out of it when there she was, in her robe, opening the door to the guest room to come into the hallway. Caught barefooted.
“Is he in there?” I was outraged.
“He who?”
“Gus!” I whispered. Maybe it was more like a hiss.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You think he climbed in the damn window?”
“Why are you in the guest room then?”
She shrugged, turned sideways to go around me, didn’t look at me as she did. “Felt like it . . . bed’s better. Did you make coffee?”
“I just woke up.”
“Just switch it on. I set it up last night. Can you do it while I pee?” she said as she went into the bathroom.
“Got it,” I said, and did. But I’ll tell you this. I didn’t believe her about the bed.
I waited her out, though, knowing that after breakfast she’d get dressed—yes, she went back into the guest room, which clearly wasn’t for guests anymore—and when she came out, dressed in a typical Louisa god-awful getup, she headed out to feed the chickens. It was only because I didn’t want to slow her down that I managed not to say, “Tell me you’ve never let him see you look like that.”
I watched through the kitchen window to make sure she was engrossed with the chickens. I opened the kitchen window a couple of inches to make sure I’d hear her out there because I knew she talks to them all the time. Then, of course, I headed straight for the door I hadn’t opened yet, the one to her real bedroom, the one she’d shared all those years with her husband, Harold, until he’d killed himself, six months after their only grandson Cody was killed by a drunk driver. Harold couldn’t go on, believing he carried the weight of failure to find justice for the boy he loved so truly. And, of course, he never got over blaming Gary. Still, nobody really understood Gary’s turn to the religious cult, it seemed an obvious scam, but I guess guilt can weigh so much that a body can’t stagger another step without a way to put it down. Gary was promised something he needed more desperately than his savings, and though that preacher snaked his way on to his next tent full of victims, Gary was hooked. The internet reeled him in. But all that’s Louisa’s story to tell, not mine, and maybe you couldn’t bear it anyway.
I digressed there for a minute, didn’t I? So, Louisa was out with the chickens clucking around, carrying on with the girls as if she’s the original mother hen. I realized I was getting testy because I flat didn’t know what else she was keeping from me. We’d never kept anything from each other. Not that I knew of anyway. Until her last grand Plan, come to think of it. Maybe that had gone to her head and now she thought she didn’t need me. Well, I’d have to show her she couldn’t get away with that crap.
I marched to her bedroom and opened the door.
Chapter 5
Gary
Gary knew it was far too late for him to redeem himself with Nicole, even though she’d never remarried. Adultery was too much for her to accept, and who could blame her? He loved her still, and it wasn’t devoid of an element of lust. He didn’t know what had come over him when he’d had the episode with her sister-in-law, just crazy stupid, he supposed, and pure bad luck that Nicole’s brother caught them right in the act. Made it difficult to deny, for one, and for two, he blushed if he remembered it, his own bare ass bobbing up and down in the air like some kind of a carnival target when Rocco walked in on him and Sandra. It had put him at a distinct disadvantage in the confrontation that followed. For three, it was a major sin: Nicole being wrapped up in their son’s activities and her job, not absorbed in his problems anymore, was no excuse. Or so he’d been told, and he’d come to see his error. Too late, though, and she’d divorced him and moved back to her hometown long before Cody was killed. His being Saved afterward hadn’t moved a last green leaf in the hacked-off thicket of their abandoned marriage; he’d let her know about it, but she’d not responded. He still wondered how she survived losing their son, and if she, too, thought Cody wouldn’t have been killed by that drunk driver if he’d been a better father. He’d never know, he guessed. She’d never been one to lash him with her words when they were married.
The second time he’d fallen was worse because it was after he’d been Saved, thanks to the balm of Brother Zachariah’s words, and permission to donate. Then, even though his savings were gone, he’d been able to get himself ordained and establish his own church. There were new faithful now, supporting him and his work. Evangelism was endless and many new members didn’t have the funds even to tithe. But Reverend Gary turned no one away, especially not the ones whose lives were broken, as his had been, first by Cody’s death, and then his father’s. How could he have closed the church door to Rosalina, with immigration agents all over and Jesus Is The Answer proclaimed on the very banner he had hanging on the side of the rented white barn that served as his church? She’d spent months making her way up from Honduras, trusting the human smugglers her father had paid. The conditions in the back of that truck must have been brutal. Two died, she said. (The heat. No water. She’d answered flat and matter-of fact, as if he should have known.) Survivors heard it was safer in the Midwest, so after crossing the border, she’d worked her way up from Texas. It wasn’t safer anymore. Agents spread out after raiding the warehouses near Indianapolis where immigrants who didn’t have good papers could get hired anyway. Some of the undocumented made it from the city into surrounding rural areas to hide, hoping for work, and found it with a convenience store chain that had stores around the city of Elmont. Some nurseries that supplied garden stores couldn’t find enough American workers; they paid less and under the table, but it was something.
Gary understood the despair of suffering souls and gave them the same comfort and hope he’d been given. Especially Rosalina. His mistake had been touching her. But she’d been crying, that was how it had started.
At least he’d stopped. He’d come to his senses afterward. Yes, he’d sinned but he counted it as a sign that he’d not been caught, but stopped himself after those few days, repented on his own. How could he not have put money in Rosalina’s hand, given her food, a change of clothes from a woman in his flock when he told her she had to go? She’d acted hurt, even though he drove her to the nearest Catholic church. He’d had to stop himself from the sinning. It had been the right thing to do. The sin remained, though, a rock on his chest, as had his failure to minister to the least among them, until he’d received the sign at his uncle’s funeral.
It had been the second big failure of his work, after being unable to herd his own mother into the flock. Louisa claimed her fields, woods, and creek were her church, and the creatures