Sarah Knolls
Sarah Knolls slumped on the couch, dressed in a shabby nightgown worn thin from years of use. Her long and graying hair was pinned tight to her skull with a handful of bobby pins. Liver spots dotted her scalp like a leopard’s skin. Only sixty-eight years old, but she looked and felt seventy-eight. She clutched a Kleenex in her hand and stared at the front door. Her expression was dull and flat, and she didn’t seem to notice the cold that hung over the quiet house like plastic tarp.
She heard Lester’s truck pull out of the driveway and was glad to have him finally gone. He had asked her if she wanted him to stay for a while. Asked her if she wanted him to take her over to Scott or Skeeter’s house. Asked her if she wanted a drink. Asked her about a bunch of stuff that she didn’t want or care about. She shook her head to all of that. She wanted him to leave. To get out of her house and leave her alone.
Right before he stepped outside, Lester had asked her if she was going to be okay. She thought she nodded yes, but what kind of question was that? Her daughter and husband were murdered in cold blood. Dead. It just didn’t seem real. She wished that this were all a horrible nightmare, but it wasn’t. It was really happening.
How am I gonna go on? How?
She bit at her lower lip hard enough to draw blood.
Why would God let this happen to my baby? What did she do to deserve this?
The house had never felt so quiet. The furnace was set to sixty, and the dogs were still sleeping upstairs, so only the occasional creak of the house settling interrupted the absence of noise. After all the kids had moved out, she complained to Johnny that it was too quiet. No quarreling. No tattling on one another. No whining about homework or chores. None of the squawking she thought she would never miss until it was gone.
When Johnny was at work, the whole house sank into a horrible silence except for the sound of the wind and the ticking of clocks. Sarah didn’t know what to do with herself. Didn’t know what to do with all her free time. Johnny wasn’t so good about expressing his feelings or comforting her when she was feeling out of sorts. He told her not to get so worked up—all their kids still lived in town. Then he told her that maybe she would be able to keep the house a little cleaner with all her spare time. Son of a bitch only cared about himself. The love had slipped out of their marriage some thirty years ago.
Sarah felt numb. She didn’t remember everything Lester had told her. She was fast asleep when he’d banged on the door. The dogs yapped a few times before burrowing back under the covers and dozing off again—guard dogs they were not. She figured Johnny was drunk again, couldn’t find his house key, and was pissed off about something. The nights of him coming home drunk and horny and wanting to crawl on top of her were long gone. Now he was always breaking something or punching walls or swearing to himself when he got all liquored up. He had hit her a few times when they were first married, so she was careful to stay clear of him when he was in a mood.
She knew Danny Bedford. Everybody in town knew everybody. Sarah always felt sorry for the boy. Big and dumb and all on his own. First his parents had their accident, then his uncle passed young. No loss with Brett, though. Johnny used to drink with Brett and bring him into the house from time to time after working second shift over at Taylor Beef. When Johnny would get up to fetch a few more beers, Brett would sit on her couch with his dirty boots kicked up on the coffee table, staring at her with those eyes. Eyes crawling all over her backside, and she could tell what he was thinking. She didn’t like to be in the room alone with him if she could help it. And she noticed the bruises on Danny’s arms when she saw him around town. When she went to Johnny about what she suspected with Danny, he told her to keep her big nose out of Brett’s business.
Got to be hard enough raising that retard. No harm in using the belt when the occasion calls.
So it had made Sarah feel good that Mindy was so nice to Danny when everyone else laughed and picked on him. Even her boys, Scott and Skeeter, taunted him awful in school back in the day.
The urge to get up and off the couch hit her, but when she tried to stand, her knees buckled and gave out and she flopped back onto the cushions. Her little girl was gone? Just like that she was no more. Mindy hadn’t even given her any grandbabies yet.
Mindy had wanted to leave Wyalusing right after high school. She was young and wanted to spread her wings and explore the world, but Sarah encouraged her to stay put. She told Mindy that there would be plenty of time to go out on her own. She convinced Mindy that she belonged here with her family. Sarah knew that was selfish. She just didn’t want her daughter to leave. Didn’t want Mindy to leave her here all alone with Johnny since the boys were married and leading their own lives.
Oh, God, this is all my fault. I made her stay, and look what happened to her.
She held back her tears. Not yet.
Lester didn’t want to say who had done it, but she wouldn’t let him leave until she knew the truth. When he finally told her, she informed Lester that she wanted to see Danny. She wanted to ask him why. Why would he do that to her poor Mindy? How could he have murdered her baby? Lester wasn’t able to keep her eye when he said that Danny had run up into the woods around Spring Hill, but he promised her that they would catch him after sunrise and lock him up.
“We’ll find him, Sarah. You’ve got my word on that. We’ll get him and lock him up so he can’t hurt anyone again,” Lester had promised. Sarah heard herself laugh at him.
“That gonna bring Mindy back?” she had asked.
Johnny was dead because he was drunk and stupid. Sarah knew that he probably would have shot Lester if the state trooper hadn’t shown up and killed him. She wasn’t so sad about Johnny. Not really. She hadn’t loved him in a long time. In fact, she had grown to hate the man. He hadn’t used his hands on her in the last few years, but he didn’t hold back on using his words on her. They were mean words—hateful, ugly words. She would have left him twenty years ago—after the kids were all gone—if she thought she could live on her own. As drunk as he always was, he still collected a paycheck. He paid the bills and put food on the table. She didn’t know a thing about working a job and taking care of finances.
She felt herself stand up on legs that were cooperating now and snatch the car keys from the hook by the door. Some part of her brain was telling her body what to do, and that was fine by her. She went outside without grabbing a jacket. It was cold and snowing, but she didn’t care.
Oh, God, my baby girl is dead.
She got into the station wagon and felt the cold vinyl seats through her paper-thin nightgown. There was a layer of ice and snow on the windshield, but she didn’t have it in her to scrape it off. The engine turned over after a few tries, and she pulled out of the driveway. She clicked on the windshield wipers, and they slowly pushed off the top layer of snow, but the ice stuck fast no matter how many times the wipers ran over it. Heck with it—she would drive anyway.
As she pulled the car out onto the road, she felt like she had tunnel vision. Like she was staring through a telescope. Dark on both sides of her. Through patches of ice on the windshield, all she could see was the road directly in front of the station wagon. Her hands clutched at the steering wheel, and her body began to tremble, but not from the cold—shock was creeping its way in. Closing her throat and making it dry as paper. Her tongue clicked on the roof of her mouth, and she had a hard time swallowing. The darkness on both sides of her narrowed even tighter—the road just a speck of light before her—but she needed to keep going before she completely shut down.
Please, Jesus, let them be on time . . . just let them be there.
Her mind felt foggy, as if she was dreaming or ready to pass out. She cranked open the window and let the bitter cold whip against her face. Her feet felt so cold. She looked down and noticed that she wasn’t wearing slippers or socks. She could feel the rubber pad of the gas pedal against her bare skin.
She drove through town, never stopping or slowing at stop signs. If there were other cars out this early, she didn’t see any.
She passed the feed shop and turned right at the bottom of the hill. Her bare foot pressed harder on the gas pedal, and the station wagon started to slide on a patch of ice and drift toward the ditch, but she didn’t slow down any. Her reactions were sluggish. She didn’t jerk the wheel or let up on the gas. She let the car slide—she didn’t care if she ended up in the ditch. If she crashed and was slung through the windshield and died, that would be fine by her. She could be with Mindy again. That thought made the lump in her throat get that much bigger. The car fishtailed two or three more times before it finally straightened out and she managed to stay in the middle of the road.
She saw the sign up ahead for Reliable Auto Repair. The boys had painted the sign themselves. Instead of slowing, she gunned the car faster. It took the dip into the parking lot and skidded to a halt in front of the glass office door. Just a few more inches and she would have run the car right through the panel of glass. She put the station wagon into park and sat there. She wasn’t sure for how long. Her body shook, rattling the dentures in her mouth, and she couldn’t feel her numb feet and toes, which felt like they were a mile away from the rest of her.
Sarah gazed down at her hands and saw that she was still clutching the piece of tissue. A dot of liquid dropped onto the lap of her nightgown. Then another. A warm trickle of tears flowed from her eyes and rolled off her tired cheeks. She shoved her knuckles into her mouth and bit down hard enough to give her body a jerk.
Just hold it together for a few more minutes. Just keep it together.
She didn’t hear them turn in to the lot. Scott’s red pickup truck pulled up beside her, and he beeped the horn. Skeeter sat in the passenger seat smoking a cigarette. She looked over and saw them exchange a look and say something to each other.
Sarah fumbled for the handle and tried to open the station wagon’s door, but it wouldn’t budge. She put her shoulder against the door panel and gave it a shove—the damn thing still didn’t give. She slammed harder and harder, feeling trapped and panicked. Then she noticed that the lock was down. She yanked it up, shoved once again, and the door swung open easily. Sarah toppled out of the car and landed on her hands and knees in a few inches of frozen slush on the parking lot pavement. When the boys climbed out of the truck, she began to cry—loud, gut-wrenching sobs.
Sarah tried to stand but slipped onto her back in a frozen puddle of water. She didn’t try to get up again. She just lay in the icy water feeling the cold soak through her nightgown as her two sons swooped down on her, grabbed her by the arms, and tried to get her back on her feet.
