everyone on edge.
Everyone, that is, but her. She wasn’t worried that day about the weather as she hung her wet sheets on the line behind the old farmhouse and waited—not for rain but for the sound of his truck coming up the deadend road.
JOLENE SWALLOWED AND looked up, afraid someone would come through the school’s door at any minute and catch her. Reading this felt like a guilty pleasure. Gathering up her work, she stuffed everything into her backpack and biked home.
Once there, she poured herself a glass of lemonade and, unable to postpone it any longer, picked up the story again.
THE SWELTERING HEAT ON the wind wrapped her long skirt around her slim legs, and lifted her mane of dark hair off her damp neck as she stared past the clothesline to the dirt road, anticipating her lover’s arrival.
She’d sent the little girl off to play with her new friend from across the creek. A long, lazy afternoon stretched endlessly before her and she ached at the thought, her need to be fulfilled by a man as essential as her next breath.
Over the sound of the weather vane on the barn groaning in the wind and the snap of the sheets as she secured them to the line, she finally heard a vehicle.
Her head came up and softened with relief, a clothespin between her perfect white teeth, her lightly freckled arms clutching the line as if for support as she watched him turn into the yard.
Dust roiled up into the blindingly bright day, the scorching wind lifting and carrying it across the road to the empty prairie.
She took the clothespin from her mouth, licking her lips as she secured the sheet, then leaving the rest of her wet clothes in the basket, she wiped her hands on her skirt and hurried to meet the man who would be the death of her.
JOLENE TOOK A BREATH and then reread the pages. She had no more clue as to who could have written this than she had the first time. Nor was she sure why the submission upset her the way it did. It was just fiction, right?
Why give it to her to read though? All she could think was that one of her student’s parents always wanted to write and was looking for some encouragement.
“All my daughter talks about is the short story you’re having the students write,” Amy’s mother had told her. “The other students and their families are talking about it as well. You’ve excited the whole community since I’m told the stories will eventually be bound in a booklet that will be for sale at next year’s fall festival.”
Was that how the author of the murder story had found out about the assignment? Which meant it could be anyone, not necessarily one of her student’s parents. But one of the students had to be bringing it in to class.
Jolene got up and went to the window, hoping for a breath of fresh air. Heat rose in waves over the pale yellow wild grass that ran to the Little Rockies.
What did the writer expect her to do with this? Just read it? Critique it? Believe it?
She shuddered as she realized that from the first sentence she’d read of the story, she had believed it. But then that was what good fiction was all about, making the reader suspend disbelief.
Even though she knew how the story ended since the writer had begun with the murder, she had the feeling that the writer was far from finished. At least she hoped that was the case. She couldn’t bear the thought that whoever was sending her this might just quit in the middle and leave her hanging.
She looked forward to seeing the next part of the story Wednesday morning and didn’t want to think that she might never know who or why someone had given it to her to read. As disturbing as the story was, she felt flattered that the writer had chosen her to read it.
As she stood looking out the window, she had a thought. Had such a murder occurred in this community? The old-timers around here told stories back to the first settlers. If there had been a brutal murder around here, she was sure someone would be able to recall it.
Especially one involving a young widow with a daughter living in an old farmhouse one very hot, rainless spring.
Jolene glanced back up the road to the Whitehorse Community Center. Several pickups and an SUV were parked out front for the meeting of the Whitehorse Sewing Circle. If anyone knew about a murder, it would be one of those women.
DULCIE WAITED UNTIL THE dust settled from the combine and the cowboy before she turned back to the house. Her gaze was drawn to the second-floor window again and the pale yellow curtain.
She was sure the color had faded over the years and she couldn’t make out the design on the fabric from here, but something about that yellow curtain felt oddly familiar.
Careful to make sure no rattlesnakes had snuck up while she’d been waiting, she took a few tentative steps toward the house. Had she seen this house with its yellow curtains in a photograph? Surely her parents had one somewhere.
Boards had been nailed across the front door and the lower windows. There would be no getting into the house without some tools. But did she really want to go inside?
She noticed a sliver of window visible from beneath the boards and moved cautiously through the tall weeds to cup her hands and peer inside.
She blinked in surprise. The inside of the house was covered in dust, but it looked as if whoever had lived here had just walked out one day and not returned.
The furniture appeared to be right where it had been, including a book on a side table and a drinking glass, now filled with cobwebs and dust, where someone had sat and read. There were tracks where small critters had obviously made themselves at home, but other than that, the place looked as if it hadn’t been disturbed in years.
Since the murder?
Dulcie felt a chill and told herself the cowboy might have just made that up to scare her, the same way he had warned her about rattlesnakes.
According to the documents, Dulcie had been left the property twenty-four years before. She would have been four.
Who left property to a four-year-old?
Laura Beaumont apparently.
Dulcie drew back, brushed dust from her sleeve and started to turn to the rental car to leave when she heard a strange creaking groan that made her freeze.
What sent her pulse soaring was the realization that she’d heard this exact sound before. She found her feet and stepped around the side of the house to look in the direction the noise was coming from.
On top of the barn, a rusted weather vane in the shape of a horse moved in the breeze, groaning and creaking restlessly.
Dulcie stood staring at it, her eyes suddenly welling with tears. She had been here before. The thought filled her with a horrible sense of dread.
She wiped at the tears, convinced she was losing her mind. Why else did a pair of yellow curtains and a rusted weather vane make her feel such dread—and worse—such fear?
Chapter Three
Russell Corbett
