Читать книгу A Killing Frost - Hannah Alexander - Страница 13

D oriann had no idea where she was, or where she was going, but the road had to be just ahead. Briars and branches caught at her hair and her soaked jacket, and the mud that filled her shoes squished with every step. She pushed her way through the briars, ignoring the pain. She’d worry about the blood later. She couldn’t think about that now.

In fact, if she was bloody when she reached the road, someone would stop for sure. Who wouldn’t pull over for a bloody, lost little girl?

Okay, maybe not a little girl, but she sure was lost, and if she kept getting caught in blackberry brambles, she’d be as bloody as a victim in one of the horror movies Mom and Dad never let her watch. Now if only a car would pass on that lonely road…if she could find the stupid road.

She stumbled, looked down and glimpsed a tire rut in the ground. Must be going the right way if that was from the truck. They’d hit the ground hard a couple of times. She plunged through another thicket of trees at the top of the hill. The road was here, it had to be right here….

The ground sank beneath her. She fell on her bottom in soft mud, saw the broad, silvery sparkle of the Missouri River spread out in front of her, flowing in the morning sunshine. She gasped.

It wasn’t the road! She’d been running in the wrong direction! The ground sank farther, and she scrambled backward to keep from plunging into the water.

She looked up to see sunbeams streaking through the tree limbs to her left. So that was east. There were no straight lines in the woods, and that crazy river went every which way.

Aunt Renee said when you got lost in the woods without a fancy GPS device, then you had to look for the sun. If it was cloudy, you had to follow the water. It was the only way to find civilization again. Water followed the path of least resistance, and creeks drained into rivers, and there were people at the rivers, especially the Missouri.

Doriann glanced back the way she had come, and heard the rustle of brush, a voice, swearing and yelling.

She was trapped! She looked down where loose, muddy dirt had sunk beneath her feet. She couldn’t jump into the river; though she was a good swimmer, it was too cold. Aunt Renee said Grandpa was worried about a killing frost harming the vineyard this year. Tonight was supposed to be the killer. It had been a warm spring, but the past two days had been cold. It was a bad combination.

The rustling noises grew louder, the angry voices sharper. She rolled to her side to duck behind a bush. At least the warm spring had produced early buds and leaves for cover.

Unfortunately, the pale green buds and brambles stuck to her clothing, and every time she moved, the whole bush quivered.

She tugged off her bright purple jacket, dropped it onto the ground, then rolled onto it. Maybe her light green T-shirt and blue jeans—now covered with mud—wouldn’t show up too much…and maybe her red hair would blend with…what? The sky? The river? Nothing!

Okay, but her hair was drenched, so it was darker, and might not be so obvious.

Clancy and Deb were getting closer. They would see her for sure. She was toast.

Think, Doriann, think!

Okay, what did people do to hide? They climbed trees. But Clancy and Deb were already too close; she’d be seen if she tried to go up a tree trunk.

She glanced along the riverbank again. Where had she seen someone hiding…Yes! In Lord of the Rings, in the first movie, the hobbits hid beneath the bank’s ledge when the ring wraith was looking for them. There were roots…

She studied the bank in both directions, searching for a tree teetering at the very edge…

Nothing. And there was no one on the river this morning who would hear her call for help. Even if there was, she couldn’t call loudly enough to get anybody’s attention without giving herself away to the killers. Besides, what if they killed whoever tried to rescue her?

She was toast.

Jama drove the familiar main thoroughfare of her hometown, looking for a light blue Honda Civic. She could probably call Kaiser’s grocery store and ask if Fran Mercer was there, but Jama wanted to deliver the news about Monty herself.

Several kindhearted women in River Dance had undertaken the responsibility of mothering Jama after her own troubled mother had left. Tilly Kaiser, who ran Kaiser’s Grocery with her husband, Harold, had watched every Saturday morning when Jama did the weekly shopping, ensuring that the young girl chose nutritious food—fruits and vegetables, lean meats, whole grains, milk. Tilly allowed the occasional candy bar or small carton of ice cream, but no sugary breakfast cereals. Tilly could claim credit, during Jama’s early adolescence, for neither Jama nor her dad developing cavities.

Ellen Schiska, who owned the Second in Time clothing and shoe store, always set aside the nicest—and most modest—recycled apparel in Jama’s size. By selecting clothing that had come from sources out of town, Ellen protected Jama from ridicule by school peers.

Thanks to these women, few of Jama’s classmates realized the struggle Dad had supporting the two of them after Mom left. Few knew the debt Mom incurred for Dad in her state of mind. Dad never spoke to anyone about the night job he held in Fulton as the elementary-school janitor. To everyone in River Dance, Richard Keith ran the local farm implement sales and repair, and managed a thriving business.

And then there was Zelda Benedict. She had a full-time job, a louse for a husband and the responsibility of raising her two willful grandchildren after her daughter’s death from a drug overdose, but Zelda had found time to notice Jama often enough at the nursing home to teach her about patient care. It was partly due to Zelda’s professional recommendation that Jama was accepted into med school.

Despite the kindness of the women in Jama’s youth, it was Fran Mercer who held a mother’s place in Jama’s heart.

One day during Jama’s sophomore year in high school, Monty and Fran Mercer had pulled Jama out of her chemistry class. They walked with her to the counselor’s office and sat with her while she was given the news that her father had been killed in an accident, delivering a tractor to a customer.

Fran had held Jama while she cried, and together, Monty and Fran assured Jama she would never be alone. They took her into their home when she was fifteen, and she became a part of the family.

Jama could never hope to repay Fran’s motherly kindness. She’d loved Jama the most when Jama was the least lovable, the most angry over life’s losses, seething at a mother who’d abandoned her, and at a fate that had taken her father from her far too soon.

And so it was Fran for whom Jama would risk anything, including her job.

Jama found her moments after leaving the clinic. Community-minded, Fran preferred to do as much of her shopping in River Dance as she could.

When Jama drove into the parking lot of Kaiser’s, she immediately spotted Fran’s bright red hair, which had been inherited by three of her five grandchildren. Fran was carrying two bags of groceries toward her car. When she saw Jama, her face broke into a wide smile. She rushed to her car, placed the groceries inside and was waiting with arms open wide when Jama reached her.

“Sweetie, I was just thinking about you.” Fran smelled of the lavender soap she had used for years. The yarn of her pink sweater tickled Jama’s chin.

“Fran, I’ve got—”

“I know you must be on your way to work.” Fran checked her watch. “I bet you ran off without breakfast again, didn’t you? I was going to deliver some sausage quiches by the clinic, knowing your habits haven’t changed much over the years.” She patted Jama on the back. “Too bad I didn’t bring them with me to the store, but—”

“Fran.” Jama took her sixty-year-old foster mother’s hands. “I had my first patient at the clinic. It was Monty.”

Jama explained the situation, slightly surprised that Fran hadn’t already heard about her husband by way of the lively River Dance grapevine.

Fran’s fair skin paled visibly.

“You took care of him yourself?” Fran asked.

“I was the only one there or I’d have requested someone else—”

“Nonsense, I’m glad it was you. Sounds to me as if you made the right call, hon.”

“Harold Kaiser helped carry Monty into the clinic,” Jama told her. “Haven’t you seen him this morning? I’d thought he might tell you.”

“You know he hired that new manager. He and Tilly don’t come in until the afternoon now. I’ll just go see if the store will hold my groceries for me until I can collect them.”

“You can ride with me, and we’ll have Tilly take the groceries to your house when she’s off her shift. She still has a key to your house, doesn’t she?”

“Yes, but I never lock my doors, you know that. Honey, I can drive myself to the hospital. You have a new job, and a new boss who needs your—”

“My new boss doesn’t need me as much as my family does right now. I would be little help to her when I’m worried about Monty.”

Fran’s gentle gaze rested on Jama. “No reason to worry. He’s receiving excellent care, I’m sure. It’s in God’s hands.”

Jama carried the groceries back into the store, explained the situation to Anita, the cashier who had worked the register for twenty years, and returned to the parking lot. She opened the passenger door of her Outback for Fran and waited. Fran was not driving herself, and that was final.

Fran relented with grace—more likely for Jama’s sake than for her own.

“I don’t know how you do that,” Jama said as she pulled out of the parking lot and drove north toward Highway 94.

“Do what, hon?”

“Place everything in God’s hands and let Him handle it.”

Fran paused, staring out across a portion of the family vineyard to the left of the road. “Sounds like a simplistic Sunday-school answer, doesn’t it?”

Jama grimaced. That was exactly what she’d been thinking, and she was ashamed. She was a believer, but this bit about trusting her loved ones and her future to God…that was a hard lesson to master. She’d failed repeatedly at the faith walk that Fran made look so easy.

“Did you ever think it’s the Sunday-school answer because it’s the right one?” Fran asked. “Oh, wait a minute.” She fluttered her fingers over her mouth. “I forgot I’m talking to the original Missouri mule. Little Jama Keith always had to develop her own theory about everything from cooking a breakfast of fried potatoes, eggs and mountain oysters, to understanding God.”

Jama cast her foster mother a stiff grin. “Some things—”

“Never change. I know. But, honey, I trust in God’s power and in eternity. Otherwise, they’d have buried me with Amy.”

Jama turned left onto the highway and headed west, her hands a little tight on the steering wheel, a lump swelling in her throat. She swallowed and focused on the road.

They rode in silence for several miles, and Jama struggled to think of something besides Monty’s gray face, and her instinctive decision to withhold treatment for the most obvious symptoms.

“When I was a young mother,” Fran said, once they were a few miles from River Dance, “I used to worry about how my children would turn out as adults, what I was doing, the decisions I might make that could scar them for life.”

Jama glanced at her. “You were a great mom. Your kids always loved you.”

Fran nodded. “I never doubted that. I finally realized that the worry didn’t do anyone any good, and it took too much time—I was too busy raising my children, keeping house, helping Monty in the fields and vineyards to spend much time worrying. I still struggle with it occasionally. Who doesn’t? I mean, it seems the motherly thing to do, you know. To worry about your children. A loving gesture.”

Jama swerved to miss a dog, honked at it, glanced at it in the rearview mirror. “That looked like Monty’s hunting hound.”

“Probably is. He wanders away sometimes. Monty likes to hunt on Andy Griswold’s property, so Humphrey knows the area. There’s no leash law in River Dance. I suppose there should be, but you know Humphrey, he loves to wander.”

Jama cast Fran a quick look, saw that she was gazing at the Missouri River to the left. Her lips curved downward, her eyes seemed to have dulled in the past few minutes. For all the talk about not worrying, she appeared less than serene. And then she saw Jama’s expression.

“Okay, you caught me.”

“You doing okay?” Jama asked.

“I’ll be fine. How about you? It can’t be easy, making the kinds of decisions you have to make.”

“All that expensive training has its advantages. If I had worried about every patient I saw during residency, I’d have been no good to anyone.”

“But this is Monty,” Fran said gently.

“As I said, that’s where the training kicks in. I’ve seen enough cases like Monty’s to be able to read signs that might not be immediately apparent to others.” She thought about the nurse who had questioned her skills.

Jama glanced toward the river—that steady, curving constant in her life. The Missouri River Valley, lush and fertile, contained the winding force of nature with some difficulty. The flatlands produced high yields when the weather cooperated, but the farmers had to “get while the gettin’ was good,” as Monty would sometimes say. Flooding could wipe out a season of work in a few hours.

Farming was always a risky endeavor, though Monty had done well over the years, supporting his family in comfort through hard work.

Much like medicine. It was never a sure thing.

Jama cast another glance at her foster mom. Monty would be okay. He had to be okay.