House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland 4)

“Where are you going?”

“California. Or somewhere out there.” She lifted her face toward the window. “Don’t come after us.”

“Us?”

“You think I’m leaving without Ishmael?”

It was early morning, the flowers in the garden blue with shadow, the windows closed. He could smell his odor in the closeness of the room. “I have to know the truth.”

“About what?”

“Before I killed him, Romulus Atwood said he looked through the parsonage window and saw you and the minister going at it. He described the rose tattooed on your shoulder.”

She turned around. “Ishmael climbed through a fence and chased a white-tail. I went after him and caught my blouse on the wire and tore the buttons. Reverend Levi gave me a shirt to wear.”

“He he’p you put it on?”

She folded one of her dresses and placed it in the trunk, her back stiff with anger. She said something to herself.

“I didn’t catch that,” he said.

“I said I feel sorry for you. Leave us alone, Hack. It didn’t work out. End of our romantic tale on the Guadalupe.”

“Don’t leave me, Ruby. I won’t drink no more. Or at least I’ll try.”

“You know what Reverend Levi said about you? You have the capacity to show love and mercy but not the will to sustain it. He said his father was the same kind of man. You grew up in a time when mercy was an extravagance. I thought that was well put.”

He opened a window. The coolness of the morning had died; the sun’s heat was already rising off the lawn. “Where’s Ishmael?”

“He had croup all night.”

“Respiratory illness runs in my family.”

“So does insanity,” she said.

“I cain’t see anything straight, Ruby. I got something on my conscience, too. I don’t do well with problems of conscience.”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“I blew Atwood apart a piece at a time. While I did it, I think I wanted to put the minister’s face on his. In spirit, I was killing a man of the cloth. I cain’t make that go out of my head.”

She closed the trunk. There was neither anger nor sympathy in her expression. She was wearing an ankle-length dress with puffed white sleeves. “I’ll write.”

“Remember when we first met. I called you ‘dutchie.’ I thought you were going to give me a slap across the head. That’s when I knew you were the girl for me.”

“We weren’t meant to be together,” she replied.

He looked into the emptiness of her eyes and knew that no power on earth could change what was about to happen. Atwood may have been a liar; Ruby may have told the truth about the torn blouse; the minister may have been innocent of guile or design; but there was no denying the fact that her love for Hackberry had taken flight, in the way that ash rises from a dead fire and breaks apart in the wind and is never seen again.

“You meeting him out west?” he said.

“I haven’t told him where I’m going.”

“But you will.”

“A boy needs a father.”

He felt his face flinch. “Get out of my house,” he said.