“We have to take care of her,” Angel said. “She doesn’t have anyone else. Her family is all the way out in California.”
She’d already made up her mind. She wouldn’t be like her father — she’d stay where she was needed.
“But who’s going to take care of you and your sisters?” Missy said.
“We’ll take care of one another.”
“You’re all in my custody now.”
Angel said, “We’re going to stay with Brandi tonight.”
And with that, Angel turned and went back into the hospital. Missy had no choice but to follow.
A doctor was there to talk to Lois, and he was saying that Wayne was going to be all right. He had some stitches in his head, and he was still a little confused, but his vital signs were good, and she could see him now. They’d admitted him and wanted to keep him at least overnight to make sure that he was strong enough to go home.
Missy said she’d wait as long as Lois needed her to.
Angel went back to check on Brandi, and in a few minutes she was back. “They’re releasing her,” she said, and Missy told her she’d drive Brandi home too, and she’d stay that night to help take care of her if that’s what she wanted. She’d drive Lois home first, and then she’d go to her own house and carry in the groceries — who knew if the milk and frozen things would be any good now — and she’d tell Pat what was going to happen.
“Pat can do for himself.” Missy bit her lip and looked away. Then she took a deep breath and turned back to Angel, a tremulous smile on her lips. She waved her hand in the air as if she were swatting away an annoying fly. “He won’t even know I’m gone,” she said. “He’s used to a quiet house.”
After Biggs left, Shooter let Captain sit there on the couch, rocking back and forth, his bomber jacket still clutched to his stomach.
The furnace clicked off and then enough time went by for it to come on again. The hem of the curtains by the front window — the long curtains Merlene had sewed — danced a little in the air from the floor vent.
Finally, when the quiet had become too much for him, Shooter walked across the room to where Captain was sitting and he reached down and took hold of the bomber jacket. For a few seconds, Captain held onto it. Then he let his grip go slack, and Shooter pulled the coat away from him.
“Change out of your school clothes,” Shooter said in a tired voice. “I’m going to take care of the trash. Then we’ll think about supper.”
Captain got up from the couch and went into his room. He tried not to think about anything. Don’t think about the fire, he told himself. Don’t think about the goats. Don’t think about Della or Emily or Gracie or the baby. Don’t think about Mother. She’d bought him that bomber jacket. Don’t think about that. Don’t think about Ronnie. Don’t think about the sheriff and the questions he asked. Don’t think about anything.
Captain heard the back door open and close. He went to his window and peeled back the curtain. He watched his father walking down the path he’d cleared through the snow so he could get to the burn barrel. He had a paper grocery bag full of trash in his left hand, the bomber jacket in his right. He put it all in the barrel.
Then he set it on fire. He stood there, his head bowed toward the flames, and Captain knew he was praying.
Captain turned away from the window, no longer wanting to see the flames rising above the top of the burn barrel. Even in the closed house, he could hear his father coughing. He could smell the same bad odor the air held the night Della’s trailer burned, but now he knew the stink was coming from the vinyl on his bomber jacket.
He opened his closet, and stepped inside. He closed the door and crouched down on the floor in the dark.
Della was his friend. More than that, she loved him. He knew that, and when he was with her, he remembered how it was when his mother was still alive. That’s what Della gave him — that mother’s love — and when he finally crossed the road that night, he only meant to help her. Her car wasn’t in the lane. His father had noticed that just before their argument over the goats had started, pointing out that it was so cold that Della and the kids had gone to spend the night somewhere else, probably with Lois and Wayne. Captain thought it was the exact right time to do a good turn for Della.
The deputy sat across from Ronnie. He said, “You went back out there that night, didn’t you?”
Ronnie nodded. “I was in a state when I left there that afternoon. I won’t deny that. It was over between Della and me — she’d made that plain — and I guess it caught me by surprise even if I’d thought that’s what I wanted. Pissed me off, is what it did. A crazy idea came to me. You have to understand I wasn’t thinking right. I stewed about it all evening, and then finally I made up my mind I’d do it.”
“Do what, Ronnie?”
“I’d call and see if Della and the kids were in the trailer or if they’d gone to her folks. I’d buy five gallons of gas, and if no one answered the phone, I’d go out there and burn the place. If she was going to push me, then I was going to push back. I’d put her in a mess. I’d make her sorry.”
“So you told Brandi you were going out for a drive?”
Ronnie nodded. “I pulled on my boots. I’d made up my mind.”
“But you never told Brandi that?”
“I stopped at Casey’s and called Della. No one answered. I bought that gas and drove on out the blacktop. When I got to the trailer, it was dark, and Della’s car wasn’t in the lane. She always left it in the lane, and it wasn’t there. So I felt certain she’d taken the kids and gone to Lois and Wayne’s. I parked a ways down the road. The neighbors had enough to gossip about. People like Missy Wade. I didn’t want her seeing my car pulled in the lane and wondering what was what.”
Just as he got the gas can out of his car, he said, he heard a door slam shut across the road at the Rowe house, and that was enough to spook him. “That’s when I hauled that gas can through the ditch and angled through the front yard.” He tromped through the snow and got in behind the trailer where he thought no one would see him. “I just stood there a while, catching my breath, listening, just letting things calm down.”
So, yes, Ronnie was there that night, out there behind the trailer. Brandi was retelling the story — the one he’d told her — to Angel and Missy, but she wouldn’t tell it all. No, there were parts of it she wouldn’t want the girls to ever know, parts that shamed Ronnie, parts that Brandi didn’t want to think about ever again. Angel sat on the edge of the bed. Missy stood just inside the door. Lois hadn’t said a word all the way from Phillipsport to Goldengate, and she’d refused to come inside, preferring instead to wait in the van until Missy came out to drive her home. It was then that Lois would say to Missy, “I don’t know how you can be a friend to her. Not after what she did to Della.”
How would Missy ever be able to explain what rose in her as she watched Angel help Brandi with her pajamas, and then, once she was in bed, pull the covers over her with such care? How strongly Missy felt Brandi’s need, and in that moment she let sorrow have every bit of her until it could have no more. She grieved for Della and her children, for Angel and the girlhood she was leaving behind too soon.
Standing there, looking at Angel and Brandi in the lamplight, listening to Brandi’s soft voice, watching Angel reach out and brush a few strands of wayward hair from Brandi’s face, Missy understood in a way she never quite had that life — everyone’s life — came down to this. The chance to do something good, to let people know they weren’t alone. To do it with no thought of what advantage or reward might come to you. To do it because you knew everyone was sometimes stupid, deceitful, selfish, weak. To do it because you knew you were one of those people, no matter how spotless your life. Sooner or later, trouble would find you, either of your own device or a matter of circumstances. Love was sacrifice and forgiveness. She’d heard it in church, read it in her Bible, listened to it from her parents, but somewhere along the line — somewhere in the midst of losing the babies she thought she was meant to have — she’d forgotten it all. She’d become bitter, and this business with Ronnie leaving Della for Brandi had brought out all her anger. She’d been determined to save Angel and her sisters. She’d had no way of knowing that all along it was Angel who was saving her, bringing her back to being a better person than she’d been in too long, bringing her — the thought startled her at first, but then she settled into its comfort — as close as she would ever be to feeling like a mother.