“You heard the fire marshal has said it was arson?” Laverne could tell how hard this was for Brandi. “You know there’s been talk about Ronnie?”
“He pulled a knife on me. The knife Angel found and then gave back to him.” It was at this point that Brandi got shy. She bowed her head and moved her silverware about, lining up the knife and fork just so. She put her hand on her stomach. “I’m having Ronnie’s baby. I’ve been taking care of his girls. I thought I had everything right where I wanted it.”
Maxine New arrived with their lunches. She set the steaming plates on the table.
Brandi was dabbing at her eyes with her napkin. “I swear,” she said. “I thought we were going to have a wonderful life.”
Now Laverne had questions of her own. Chief among them: where was Ronnie?
Brandi didn’t know. She’d locked him out of the house the night before and hadn’t heard from him since.
At that exact moment he was pounding on Missy’s door. She looked out the window and saw the Firebird. She took a deep breath and thought about just standing there and doing nothing. Maybe he’d get tired of pounding and head on back up the blacktop.
“Missy,” he said. “I know you’re in there.”
He’d awakened at Anna Spillman’s house, and she’d told him he could stay there as long as he wanted. Then she’d gone off to work. Late in the morning, it came to him that if he were headed toward trouble — and the question Brandi had asked him about whether he set the trailer on fire, on top of the suspicion that Biggs held, indicated that he might very well be doing just that — he’d need a lawyer, and to hire one would take money.
Missy pulled the door back a crack so she could see Ronnie, but she wouldn’t open the storm door.
“You told me you wouldn’t let my girls go without.” He tried the storm door, but it was locked. “You said any time they needed something, just to ask. I want a thousand dollars.”
“Better get out of here, Ronnie. I’ve already talked to the sheriff.”
“Damn it. I need that money. I know you’ve got it in the account, and I want it so I can do right by my girls.”
That was too much for her, his claim that he was looking after the girls. “So you can make a run for it?” she said. “I don’t think so. I know that Angel found your knife behind the trailer. I know what you did, and all I can say is God save you, Ronnie. God take mercy on your soul.”
Missy closed the door, and Ronnie felt a tremendous rage filling him. How dare she turn down his request for money and then sit in judgment of him? He tromped on back down the driveway and got into his Firebird. His hands were trembling. He backed out of Missy’s drive, dropped the Firebird into first gear, stomped the accelerator, and tore up the blacktop to town.
But he didn’t stop in Goldengate. He slowed enough to get him through there without calling attention to himself, and then he went on to Phillipsport.
Brandi was with a customer at the counter when he stomped into the Wabash Savings and Loan.
DeMova Dugger was finally getting around to taking down the last of the twinkle lights they’d put around the window for Christmas, and when she saw him, she said, “Hey, Ronnie. Brandi’s with a customer right now.” The customer, Henry Greathouse, was renewing a certificate of deposit. He was a bachelor farmer, tall and gaunt in his bib overalls, his barn coat riding up in the back due to his stooped shoulders. “Haven’t seen you in a while,” DeMova said. Her big glasses had slipped down and were resting on her cheekbones. She had that cheery grin on her face like she always did and a new frosted hairdo that she was happy with, so she was in a good mood when she went ahead and said to Ronnie, “How’s life treating you?”
She had no idea what that would do to him, but what it did was toss him even further into his rage because, of course, life wasn’t treating him well at all and hadn’t been for some time.
He stopped for just an instant and gave DeMova what she would later call “a look to kill.” Then he went on toward the counter, where he crowded in next to Henry Greathouse and said to Brandi, “How in the world can you think I’d ever do a thing like that?”
“Ronnie, I’m working,” Brandi said. She tried to keep her voice even. “I’m helping Mr. Greathouse.”
Henry Greathouse took a step to the side and studied Ronnie the way he must have a hundred or more bulls in his life when he was trying to herd them and could tell they were getting chancy.
To Ronnie’s credit, he calmed down enough to apologize to Henry. “I’m sorry, Mr. Greathouse. I’m not looking to cause a scene here.”
“You need to take it easy, son.” Henry’s voice was steady. “That’s what you need to do.”
Ronnie was tired of people trying to tell him what to do — Brandi telling him not to press charges against Wayne after he clocked him with that tire iron, Missy telling him what could and couldn’t be done with the money for the girls, and now Henry Greathouse, a man he didn’t much know, telling him to take it easy.
“Damn it, Brandi.” Ronnie slapped the counter with his open hands. “You believe all this talk?”
“I’m working, Ronnie.” This time Brandi’s voice had an edge to it. “We can’t talk about this now.”
“Did you tell all this to Laverne Ott?” Ronnie’s voice was rising as if he and Brandi were the only ones in the Savings and Loan. “Did you tell her you thought maybe I—”
“I talked to her.” Brandi cut him off before he could finish his sentence. “I told her you were at the trailer that night, and I told her you pulled that knife on me.”
“My knife? I was just trying to show it to you. I was just trying to explain.”
“I can’t have you being like that around the girls. What else did you expect me to do but to talk to Laverne? Especially if it’s true that you did what it looks like you did.” Tears welled up in her eyes and her voice shook a little. “Good God, Ronnie.”
“You’re not going to cost me my girls.” Ronnie swept his arm across the counter, scattering the documents Henry Greathouse had been resting there. “I mean it, Brandi. I won’t let that happen.”
DeMova Dugger said later that she was afraid he might come after her as he was on his way out. He had that kind of look on his face. He was mad, mad, mad.
Said Henry Greathouse, “That boy was out of his head.”
Brandi asked DeMova if she could please finish up Mr. Greathouse’s business, and then she slipped back into the break room, found the card Laverne Ott had given her at lunch, and called her cell phone to let her know what had just gone on.
“I’ve never seen him so mad.” Brandi was still trembling. “I’m afraid he might go after the girls.”
“Don’t let him get Sarah and Emma after school,” Laverne told her. “Can you get off early? I’ll be waiting for you at the grade school. I’ll call for the sheriff if need be. Don’t worry, Brandi. I won’t let him harm those girls.”
As soon as Brandi got permission from Mr. Samms to leave work early, she called Missy.
“It’s Brandi,” she said. “Please don’t hang up. I know I treated you bad last night, but now I’m in trouble.”
For a long time, Missy didn’t say anything, and Brandi was afraid to go on — afraid even that Missy had already hung up the phone.
Brandi couldn’t know that Missy was standing in her house looking out the front window, distracted by the sight of Shooter Rowe in the field across the road. He was leading one of Della’s goats by a rope around its neck. He was leading the goat toward the woods at the back edge of the field, and Missy couldn’t keep from wondering why he felt compelled to do such a thing, and why he had a shotgun cradled through the loop he made with his free hand stuck into his coat pocket.