His Last Wife

“Girl, French tips on dragon-lady nails? It was just horrible. And I didn’t even get to the clear heels you wore to the office. And your titties hanging out everywhere! Dear God!” Kerry pretended to clutch imaginary pearls around her neck.

“Umm, your ex-husband loved those nails and those heels and those breasts,” Val countered and they both laughed.

“Really, though, if you want the truth, I think maybe I was just jealous of you,” Kerry admitted sincerely and maybe to herself for the first time.

“Jealous of me?” Val was admitting something to herself for the first time with irony in her voice. It sounded something like, How could the woman I was so jealous of have been jealous of me?

“You’re beautiful,” Kerry blurted out.

“I’m just—”

“No, wait.” Kerry stopped Val from trying to lower her compliment. Now she was the one who had to let something out. “You’re not just beautiful. You’re stunning. Alluring. Sexual. Just sensuous.”

“But look where that got me.”

“Let me finish. But you’re not only that, Val.” Kerry reached over and placed her hand on Val’s leg for a second to emphasize the candidness in her speech. “You’re also free. And daring. And bold. You give a fuck!” Kerry shouted that last line in the car and they laughed together again. “You cursed me out. You cursed Jamison out. You cursed Mother Taylor out! You play by your own rules and I admire that so much.” Val said the words from her heart, but she wasn’t thinking of a single one before it came out. “And I know all of that daring is the only reason you could even think to help me when I was in jail. Funny, right? All the reasons I hated you early on were the reasons you could try to help me get out. Who else would help their dead husband’s ex get out of jail?” Kerry frowned at Val. “Come on. Only someone who makes her own rules and doesn’t care what people have to say about it.”

“Plenty of people would,” Val revealed.

“But you kept your promise to me. As crazy as it was, you kept it. And I don’t even think I could’ve. I’m sure I couldn’t have,” Kerry said. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” Val said.

“Right.”

“Right.”

“Good.”

Val looked at Kerry and repeated, “Good.”

Kerry shifted her weight on her seat and looked at the highway sign for clarity on where they were in their journey. They were nearly halfway to Dahlonega.

“Damn, this is a long way out,” Kerry said, changing the subject. “Why do you think Leaf wanted to meet us way out here?”

“Who knows. Poor little white boy sounds like he thinks the world is about to end. All I know is what I told you—he had some big news about Jamison’s case and he wanted to speak to both of us,” Val replied. She’d already told Kerry most of the other stuff Leaf had revealed to her—everything except for the information about Thirjane.

“Well, it better be good,” Kerry said. “Got us driving all the way out here. He knows black people don’t venture this far out of the perimeter. No telling what kinds of crazy folks are out here. Might run into a Klan meeting and have to call Reverend Markel Hutchins to come and get us out of the country.”

When Leaf heard footsteps coming up the front steps of the old woodsy cabin he’d been locked up in for days, his instincts automatically told him they weren’t from the company he’d invited. He noted one tap on each wooden step and that indicated one person was arriving to the utilitarian tuck-away he often knew as a summer home as a child. There was also no talking or chatter—which would be odd for the two black women he was expecting. He hadn’t heard tires turn into the drive, the sound of a car’s engine humming and then shutting off, or the doors opening and closing. This was a problem.

Standing in the back bedroom of the cabin, just getting ready to slide his shoes on, he looked to the corner beside the bed where he’d set his shotgun, but then remembered that he’d left it downstairs in the bedroom in the cellar after cleaning it.

“You move and I’ll blow your head right the fuck off!”

The above command came with the feeling of a cool bit of steel pressed at the back of Leaf’s cerebellum.

“How’d you find me?” Leaf turned around slowly and was face-to-face with Delgado.

“Does it matter?” Delgado immediately started searching Leaf’s body for weapons.

Leaf noticed that Delgado’s hair was so wet he could see his scalp and it was pink, nearly red. The coloring matched the feverish tint on his forehead and cheeks too.

“I guess it depends on why you’re here. If you’re here to take me in—”

“I’m not here to take you in,” Delgado replied quickly.

“Then there’s no harm in telling. Not if I’m a dead man. Dead men don’t tell secrets,” Leaf said. “Who sent you?”