But Captain was waiting. He could feel him watching. Captain, who was his to take care of. No one else’s. He’d promised Merlene that he’d do that much.
“What were you doing?” Captain asked him when he came back to the truck.
“Had to take a leak,” Shooter said. “Let’s go home. It’s getting late.”
“Almost time for supper,” Captain said, and Shooter told him, yes, it was, and after supper the sheriff, Ray Biggs, was going to stop by to ask Captain some questions.
For a long time, Captain didn’t say anything. He rubbed at the stains on his hands some more. Then he said, “About the fire?”
“That’s right,” said Shooter. “You remember what you’re going to say?”
Captain nodded. “I remember.”
“All right then,” Shooter said, and then he pressed down on the gas pedal, hurrying now toward home.
Missy watched the doors close behind Angel. Then she turned to find a seat in the waiting area, where Hannah was keeping Sarah and Emma entertained at a table that had puzzles and games on it.
To Missy’s surprise, she saw Lois Best occupying a chair back in the corner, nearly hidden by a half wall. She’d nodded off with her pocketbook on her lap, her hands resting on top of it, and with her head down like that, Missy nor the girls had taken any notice of her.
Missy wasn’t sure whether to wake her, but she could only assume that Lois was there because of Wayne, and it would certainly be rude not to inquire. So she took the seat next to Lois, hoping that the motion would make her open her eyes.
But it didn’t. Missy reached over and touched her on the arm. “Lois,” she said. “It’s me. Missy.”
Lois snapped up her head and opened her eyes. She blinked a few times as she studied Missy, and Missy knew she was coming back to the living with reluctance.
“Oh, honey,” she finally said. “It’s Wayne. He’s not a bit good.”
Missy asked her what the trouble was, and Lois explained that he’d gotten out of bed that morning and fallen, striking his head against the corner of the dresser.
“Opened up a big old gash.” Lois felt her own scalp. “It just bled and bled. I knew I had to call for the ambulance. They’re sewing him up now but honey, I’m not sure he even knows where he is or what happened. That’s how out of it he is.”
Lois reached out her hand, and Missy took it. She felt the dry skin, cracked from the cold, and she put her free hand on Lois’s back and rubbed slow, gentle circles to give her some comfort.
“I’ll sit right here with you,” Missy said. “I won’t leave you alone. Did you ride in the ambulance with Wayne?”
Lois nodded.
“Then I’ll wait right here, and when it’s time, I’ll give you a ride home.”
“You’ve always been good to me, Missy. And you were good to Della, too.” Lois pressed her finger to her lips, shushing herself. “Oh, just listen to me going on about myself. Shame on me. Is it one of your own that’s brought you here? Don’t tell me something happened to Pat?”
“No, it’s not Pat.” Missy hesitated, not sure whether what she was about to say would upset Lois. “It’s Brandi. She fainted.”
“And you were with her?”
Missy nodded. “At the high school. She was talking to Angel.”
“About Ronnie?”
“She was about to tell the story that Ronnie told her just before Biggs arrested him. Then she passed out. Angel’s back there with her now.”
Lois crooked her neck to peek around Missy at the double doors. “My poor grandbaby. She’s been through a world of hurt. I hope there’s no more on down the road for her, but it looks like Ronnie’s going to have something to answer for come the judgment.”
_________
Biggs was waiting in the driveway when Shooter and Captain got home. His patrol car was idling, a cloud of steam roiling out from the tailpipe.
Shooter pulled alongside him and turned off the truck. “Go on in the house,” he said to Captain. “Get out of your school clothes. Go on.”
By this time, it was close to five o’clock. Only a few minutes of daylight left. Shooter got out of the truck and watched Captain hurry by the patrol car and on up to the front door. He had a key, and he used it to let himself in.
A pair of Canada geese flew overhead, honking as they came to settle in the barren cornfield that ran along the side of the house toward the woods. Shooter knew that those geese mated for life and they were protective of each other. If one was hurt or sick, the other would guard it, not leaving until the mate got well or else died. It was a beautiful thing, Shooter thought. A very beautiful thing.
Biggs was out of his patrol car, unfolding to his full height. Shooter said, “I thought you were coming after suppertime.”
“This can’t wait.” Biggs hunched his shoulders against the cold. “I need to get your boy’s story right now.”
He slammed the patrol car door shut, the noise echoing across the fallow fields. The car door startled the Canada geese, and they lifted into the air, the gander trumpeting the alarm call. Soon they were flying over the woods.
Shooter watched them go. He stood there in the open country, his head tilted up to the sky, and he thought how easy it must be for God to look down and see everything there was to see.
“Wild geese,” Shooter said. “Just looking out for each other. Just trying to get by.”
_________
The doctors found out that Brandi had passed out because her blood pressure was high.
“They say I’ve got toxemia,” she said to Angel, who had come to sit beside her gurney while she waited to see if she’d be discharged or admitted.
“What’s that?” Angel asked.
“Sometimes pregnancy causes the mother’s blood pressure to go up. Pregnancy-induced hypertension. It can happen with first-time moms like me.”
“Will the baby be okay?”
Brandi closed her eyes a moment as she said a silent prayer. Then she explained to Angel how the placenta might not get enough blood and how if that happened the baby wouldn’t get enough oxygen and food and would have a low birth weight.
“But that might not happen,” she said. “Now that we know what’s what, there are things I can do to make sure I deliver a healthy baby.”
Those things turned out to be eating less salt, drinking eight glasses of water a day, and bed rest. The doctor told her she could go home, but he wanted her in bed most of the time, lying on her left side to take the weight of the baby off her major blood vessels.
“Who’s going to take care of things around the house?” Brandi said after she’d listened to the doctor and tried to imagine everything she’d have to do. “Who’ll take care of me?” she said, not knowing whether Ronnie would be back anytime soon, if ever, and there were the girls living with Missy and Pat. Brandi closed her eyes and thought about what might happen with Ronnie, wondered whether anyone would ever believe the story he’d told her. Then she said, “My family all lives in California. I don’t want to go all the way out there.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to the baby,” Angel said. Then a nurse came in to take out Brandi’s IV and Angel stepped out through the curtain so she’d be out of the nurse’s way and so she’d have a chance to find Missy to tell her she was worried about what was going to happen to Brandi.
Shooter and Biggs went into the house, and to Shooter’s dismay, Captain was just standing there, as if he’d been watching out the window, still in his school clothes. He hadn’t even taken off his coat. That ratty-assed bomber’s jacket — Shooter knew he should have thrown it out, but it was one of the last gifts Merlene had given Captain, and Shooter couldn’t bring himself to get rid of it. But now here was Biggs, eager for Captain’s story.