Beverly spent the next hours doing nothing. She barely remembered drifting to the front porch, numb to everything but the dense blue fog that seemed to poison every thought. Her hand and finger throbbed, but, lost in a growing sense of melancholy, she barely felt either of those things.
I need to see Tommie was all she could think.
Only then would things be different; only then would the blue fog go away. Dimly, she was aware that he’d become her lifeline, and she needed to see his serious little face as he stepped off the bus. She wanted to smooth his cowlick and tell him that she loved him. Rising, she peeked through the window toward the clock on the wall and knew the bus had to be coming soon. She left the porch and walked toward the road, uninterested in black SUVs or men in pickup trucks or farmworkers who might be watching her. There was only one important thing.
She took a seat on the stump, pain from the burn forcing its way to the forefront of her consciousness. It occurred to her that she should perhaps wrap her hand or try to find some medicinal cream, but the thought of missing Tommie’s arrival filled her with anxiety.
The clouds had continued to thicken, gray thunderheads forming. Leaves in the trees murmured with the changing weather. On a fencepost across the road, a cardinal seemed to be watching her.
Beverly stared up the road, waiting. The pain rose and sank and rose again, making her wince. She opened her hand, allowing the breeze to caress it, but that made it feel even worse, so she closed it again. The cardinal flew away, growing smaller in the distance. Beverly could feel the dark-blue fog all around her, wrapping her in its tendrils.
The bus didn’t appear, and she continued to wait, then waited some more. Eventually, farmworkers loaded into the beds of pickup trucks, and the trucks left the fields and turned onto the road, vanishing from sight. The sound of distant thunder rolled across the fields. But there was still no bus.
She returned to the porch to check the time through the front windows. The bus was either half an hour or an hour late, but she couldn’t remember which. She walked back to the stump, curiosity slowly giving way to irritation and then to concern as more time passed. When fear finally took root, the blue fog began to clear, though it revealed no answers, only more questions.
Where was the bus?
Where was her son?
Beverly felt short of breath as she realized the obvious. She walked, then ran, toward the house and burst through the door. She tried not to think the worst but couldn’t help herself; she needed to figure out what to do. Did the bus break down, or did Tommie miss the bus? Was he still at the school? She’d have to walk or hopefully catch a ride. She suddenly wished there was a neighbor nearby, a sweet old lady who brought over a pie to welcome them when they first arrived, but no one had come…
If the bus had broken down, she had to know. If Tommie was still at the school, she had to go get him. She tripped on a pile of detritus from the cupboards and went sprawling, her knee coming down hard on the linoleum floor, but she barely felt it as she scrambled upright again. She thought about the disguise she needed to wear, even though putting it on would take time she didn’t have.
She limped up the steps to her room and froze in the doorway. Her room was trashed, clothes strewn all over the floor, closet doors open, even the bed linens on the floor. She blinked, trying to make sense of it.
Had she done this? Yesterday? When she was searching the house? She could remember cleaning out under the sink and the pantry and the closet and the back porch, but by the time she went upstairs, she’d been in such a frenzy that her memories were fuzzy. She’d cleared out the linen closet, but had she done this, as well? She supposed it was possible, but she didn’t recall, and if she hadn’t…
Her throat constricted as she remembered the man with the truck.
Had he come into the house while she was digging at the creek?
She reached for the doorjamb to hold herself steady. She didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to think it had taken her that long to dig, didn’t want to imagine that someone had torn through the house in her absence and done this, didn’t want to consider what might have happened had she been inside when the man burst through the door…
No, she thought, fear sharpening her focus. She couldn’t go there, couldn’t allow herself to go down the rabbit hole. Right now, Tommie was the only thing that mattered.
Steeling herself, she moved into her bedroom, taking in the destruction. Her wig was just where she’d left it in the bathroom, along with her baseball hat. In the mirror, she noticed the blood on her shirt and she slipped out of it, exchanging it for the one that hung over the shower-curtain rod. When she looked more closely at her reflection, she barely recognized the gaunt, haunted woman staring back at her. But there was no time for makeup. The pain in her hand and finger made pinning up her hair almost impossible, and she winced as she did it anyway. After donning the wig, she put on the hat and looked for her shoes near the bed, which was where she usually left them, but she couldn’t see them anywhere. With so many clothes on the floor she had to kick through the piles, without any luck. She looked under the bed, but they weren’t there, either, and she suddenly remembered she’d slept on the couch. She must have taken them off downstairs.