The Virgin of Small Plains

Chapter Thirty-one

It had been a long day for Abby. Insurance agents. The hard physical work of pickup and cleanup. Dump trucks and hauling. The pain of seeing at close range exactly what she’d lost and the worry of thinking what it was going to take to replace it. All that in one day, plus trying to keep her landscape services going as her customers needed her to, and it was all a long way from over. Her property still looked as if a tornado had hit it and it was going to be awhile before it looked any different.

By the time she sent everybody home, she was too tired to cook for herself.

Patrick had called, saying he had to drive to Emporia to see his accountant.

It occurred to Abby as she stood exhausted under a hot shower with her stomach growling, that with Patrick away, there might be a way for her to kill two birds with one stone that evening. When she realized what metaphor she had unthinkingly used, her eyes welled up again.

Half an hour later, she rolled down her window and let the cool air whip her face and blow over her hands on the steering wheel. She loved driving on country roads at night when the only lights were the stars and the moon and the spotlights of single bulbs above barn doors, and animal eyes flashing in her headlights, and the glow of lights inside the farm and ranch houses she passed along the way.

As she approached the cemetery on Highway 177, she whispered, “Hi, Mom.”

At that moment she would have given anything to be able to talk to her mother. Since she couldn’t, she was going to do the next best thing.

Abby turned in to the gravel driveway of the Shellenbergers’ ranch house just after somebody in a pickup truck pulled out of it. She waved a hello, but no answering arm stuck out the truck window. The truck peeled off down the highway with a squeal of tires as if somebody wanted to get away fast.

“Abby!” Verna Shellenberger, standing in the cheerful light of her kitchen, beamed a welcome through the screen in the door. “I’m so glad to see you! Get on in here right this minute. Patrick told me what that storm did to you and I was just so sorry to hear it. Have you eaten? I’ve got leftover meatloaf and mashed potatoes and gravy. I’ll bet you haven’t had a thing to eat today, have you? You single girls never feed yourselves right. And guess what…I’ve got your favorite pie.”

“Sometimes I really do have impeccable timing,” Abby bragged as she stepped inside. Her exhaustion slipped away in the bright, fragrant, familiar welcome of Verna’s kitchen. “Who was that in the truck?”

“Jeff Newquist,” Verna said. “Since his mom died…”

“You have him over for supper? That’s nice.”

“I’m not so sure he thinks so.” Verna held open the door for Abby and smiled at her. “I think his father makes him come, just so Tom doesn’t have to deal with him. He’s a handful, that boy.”

“Guess what, Verna? Your son asked me to marry him.”

Verna stopped in the act of passing over a plateful of strawberry-rhubarb pie to Abby and froze for a moment, a startled, happy look in her eyes. But then her expression changed. Her hand moved its way over to Abby, who grabbed hold of the green glass dessert plate.

“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” Abby said contritely. “I meant Pat. For a minute there, you thought I meant Rex, didn’t you?”

Verna Shellenberger shook her head and smiled as she sat down in a chair on the other side of the kitchen table. “I should have known better.” She picked up a fork, but didn’t stab down into her own piece of pie. “Of course you don’t mean Rex.”

“What if I did it, Verna? What if I married Patrick?”

Patrick’s mother lowered her gaze to her pie. “You know I love my son.”

“Everybody knows that.”

Verna finally looked up at her. “If Patrick married you, it would be a good thing for him, probably the best thing ever. He would be lucky to have you, Abby. The rest of us would be lucky to have you in our family, too.”

“Aw, shucks,” Abby teased. “What about me, Verna? Would I be lucky?”

Abby had listened to Verna complain about Patrick’s behavior often enough to feel it was safe to kid about him. So she was shocked to see Verna’s kind brown eyes suddenly fill with tears.

“Oh, Verna, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I was just teasing…”

“Oh, honey, it’s not that, it’s just that ‘lucky’ is not a word I would ever use with you.” While Abby was still getting over the shock of hearing her say that, Verna really set her back by asking, “Does this have anything to do with Mitch Newquist coming home, Abby?”

“Of course not! You heard he’s back?”

Verna nodded. She picked up a fork and poked gently at the piece of pie she hadn’t eaten. “Are you going to see him?”

Abby blurted, “I already have, Verna.”

The older woman looked up at her and seemed to read something in the flush of Abby’s complexion and the embarrassed lowering of her eyes. “Does Patrick know Mitch is back?”

“Yeah.”

“Does he know you’ve been with him?”

“No.” Abby wondered if Verna actually meant what it sounded like she meant, and if so, how she’d guessed. And she was puzzled by the anxious look on Verna’s face. “Why?”

Patrick and Rex’s mother stood up and started busily picking up plates and silverware. “Because I say it’s none of his business,” she said with uncharacteristic sharpness, “even if I am his mother.”

“Verna, Patrick told me he was there the night Nathan and Rex found the Virgin.”

Dishes clattered into the sink as if they had slipped out of Verna’s hands.

“Why did you tell everybody he wasn’t there?” Abby asked her.

By “you,” she meant Verna, Nathan, and Rex.

Verna took her time filling the sink with water before she turned around, with a dish towel in her hands. “We shouldn’t have done that, Abby, and I hope you won’t ever tell anybody we did. But there was Patrick, always in trouble of one kind or another. And he had just flunked out of school. And there was that poor murdered girl, and she was found on our property. And we were just afraid people might suspect him.”

“Suspect Patrick? Why would anybody do that, Verna?”

But Patrick’s mother turned around to begin washing dishes as if she had to get every last bit of invisible bacteria off of them. “Because people are just that way, Abby. Because they need somebody to blame.”

“Verna?”

“Yes?”

“Did Nadine ever tell you why Mitch left the way he did?”

Finally, Verna turned around again, but this time she had a bit of a smile for Abby. “Let me put it this way, Abby. Nadine never told me a reason I ever believed. Not for one minute. That boy was crazy in love with you, just like you were with him. I don’t think he wanted to get away from you, I think she wanted to get him away from you, and not because it was you. She had bigger ambitions for him.” Verna’s voice turned a little tart. “And from what I hear, he has pretty much fulfilled them.”

“But why did they make him go then, Verna? Why then, of all times?”

Verna’s kind voice clouded over again. “You mean, not just because he’d come in late from your house that night? Well, they had a teenage boy, too, Abby. And Mitch was over here nearly as much as Rex and Patrick were. Maybe they were worried people might suspect him. I think a lot of us with teenage boys were a little worried that winter. Like I said, people need somebody to blame.”

“But nobody would have blamed Mitch. He didn’t even know her, Verna.”

“You don’t know that, Abby.”

“What do you mean, I don’t know that?”

“You don’t know who she was,” Verna reminded her.

“I know Mitch wouldn’t have killed anybody!” Suddenly Abby felt a little shocked. “Verna? Don’t you know the same thing about Patrick?”

“Of course I do!” Verna turned to drain the sink. “Of course I do.”

After their visit, Verna walked her outside to her truck.

“How’s Nathan?” Abby asked her. He hadn’t come downstairs while Abby was there; Verna had told her that he was upstairs talking on the phone to cattle buyers; now and then Abby had heard the rumble of his bass voice through the floorboards.

“He’s better,” was the surprising answer. “Quentin found a new drug for him, and he has felt a lot of relief since then.”

“That’s so great, Verna.”

The older woman laughed wryly. “You don’t even know.”

Abby teased, “Must have come from seeing the Virgin.”

But Verna took it seriously. “Yes, I guess it did.”

“Really?” Abby didn’t know what to think of this, even though she herself had made a special trip to ask for help in finding J.D. But somehow asking was one thing; actually receiving was something else entirely. “You believe that?”

“Well, it was right after that that Quentin gave us the new medicine.”

“Hmm. I guess we never know, do we?”

Abby turned and looked in the direction of the highway going south.

“Maybe you’ll see Patrick coming back from Franklin,” Verna said.

“Franklin?” Abby frowned in surprise. “Patrick went to Franklin?”

“That’s where he said he was going. I can’t imagine why. There’s nothing in Franklin except a few falling-down buildings.”

“I can’t imagine why, either, especially since he told me he was going to Emporia.”

Verna matched her surprised frown. “That boy,” she said, as if he were still nineteen years old and keeping her up at night from worry.

“Verna?” Abby suddenly reached out and touched the other woman’s arm. “Is everything okay?”

“What? Of course it is! Why do you say that, Abby?”

“I don’t know. You seem a little…”

“Tense?” Verna’s laugh sounded forced. “Have you seen cattle prices lately? Believe me, they’ve got everybody tense.”

“Okay.” Abby gave her a hug. “Thanks for the pie and the company.”

“Any time.” Verna tightened the embrace. “You know that. And Abby? You won’t say anything to anybody about Patrick being home that night, will you? We let it go too long without setting people straight. They’d just think it was strange now.”

“I won’t say anything, Verna.”

When Abby got out on the road and looked back, she saw that Verna was still standing in the driveway watching her leave. For some reason, it reminded her of the curtain that had dropped in her father’s living room the day before, when he, too, had stood and watched her depart.