She went to smile, but it must have hurt her mouth because she winced. She still sounded like the kid, her voice raspy, but lighter.
“Hidy.”
He dipped his head, twirled his hat.
“How you feeling?”
She raised her shoulders, then coughed. She was still so weak, and Del figured he shouldn’t stay. She was going to make it, and this eased his mind.
He said, “Cornelia here, she’s gonna take good care of you.”
Cobb nodded once.
Del went to the door, stopped, and faced her. “What’s your real name?”
She picked at the edge of the sheet covering her, like she wasn’t sure of what she ought to say.
Finally, she spoke, her voice weak. “Rae Cobb. Rae with an e.”
Surprised, he repeated the name. “Rae Cobb.”
She nodded again.
He said, “How about that. Still Rae Cobb.”
He smiled at Cornelia, put his hat back on his head, and left the room. Outside he found himself adjusting his frame of mind around the idea of the feller he’d come to know as the kid actually being a woman. An attractive young woman at that, even with crooked, cropped hair. There was something about her. Despite what she’d been through, it wasn’t hard for him to see her now, in a true sense, and he found her appealing, very much so. All the same questions he’d had flooded back in over who she really was and where she’d been, what her past was. It must be complicated. Life shouldn’t be that way, but it often was.
He rubbed Ruby, giving her his thoughts. “Old girl, sometimes I wish I were in your shoes, without a worry in the world except when my next meal and watering was coming.”
Chapter 22
Rae Lynn
Right after she was brought to the Riddles, Rae Lynn lingered near the here and there. Cornelia stayed close, fussed around the room, and though Rae Lynn didn’t open her eyes, she could hear her, and felt at peace. Before Cornelia left the room, she always put her hand to Rae Lynn’s forehead. Her touch was cool. Calming. Heaven. She took care of Rae Lynn as if she were a family member. She argued with Otis on her behalf, who looked at her like he didn’t know what to make of her. He insisted she was more trouble than Cornelia or he had time for.
“Otis, she ain’t no trouble to you.”
“She sure as hell better not be.”
“You still get all your meals and on time. Ain’t nothing no different. She only needs rest.”
He stomped out onto the porch, puffing and mumbling until finally it was only her and Cornelia. Poor Cornelia. She hadn’t chosen good husband material.
Cornelia mumbled sometimes as if she were alone. “The mess I have to put up with. Acts like a spoiled child!”
Under Cornelia’s fine care, her body healed, and when she became alert enough, she agonized over what she ought to say about herself, what she ought to do. More questions would surely come. It was doubtful Peewee would allow her to stay, not unless she could work. She could tell them she’d lost her husband unexpected like and needed somewhere to go. While it was God’s honest truth, they might wonder why she hadn’t remained where she and her husband lived, with people she knew. Surely that made more sense? Her lack of family was easily explained away because of the girls’ home, but after years of marriage, what about her husband’s own family, and if not them, people she’d known? Them who could help her so she didn’t have to go traipsing round the countryside as a man? Didn’t she have nobody close to her she could’ve counted on? Why not find work in the town she’d come from?
All these questions.
On top of it all, she had to work to avoid the deepest, darkest corners of her head, where her worst secret was kept. She picked apart the final moments with Warren. What he’d said. What she’d said. The split second she’d pulled the trigger and immediately changed her mind, wishing the bullet back in the gun. She didn’t want to spend one second on Butch, or his cockamamy idea. She hadn’t had any time to grieve, much less think on how she ought to move forward. No time at all. She’d only reacted, done what she thought best.
Tormented, she also couldn’t stop reliving her time in the box. The memory of it caused her breath to catch, in spite of being able to look over and see the sticky summer day right outside the tiny window of her room. She recollected the relentless heat and threw the thin sheet off. While she had started drinking lots of water, her terrible thirst wasn’t close to being quenched. Above it all was the horror of how she’d quit fighting, had given in to whatever would happen. It hadn’t scared her like it did now.