Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,125

quiet and our footsteps echoed as we walked through the dining room where I’d shared a meal with the family not all that long ago, then up the stairs. I was glad no one seemed to be home.

She led me into a small bedroom. A narrow bed was against one wall, a window next to the metal headboard. There was a wooden chair near the window, but no dresser or bureau in the room. A huge old chest stood at the foot of the bed.

She told me we were in Nellie’s room. There was a mattress beneath Nellie’s bed that could be pulled out for me to sleep on. “The police less likely to look in a child’s room for a … for you,” she said, but added that she needed to think of a good hiding place for me in case they showed up. She asked if I thought they would, and I heard the first hint of worry in her voice.

I just nodded. I couldn’t seem to find my voice.

Aunt Jewel studied my face and I didn’t turn away. I needed to put my trust in her.

“How far along are you?” she asked.

Somehow she knew. I told her it wasn’t Jesse’s and she asked me whose it was.

I told her everything then, struggling to keep my wits about me. I told her how Martin Drapple raped me. How I killed him with a hammer. I told her that Jesse hid his body and the hammer but the police found them, so they were after both of us now. I told her how sorry I was that I’d gotten Jesse in trouble.

She pressed a hand over her mouth as I spoke, her dark eyes never leaving my face. I could tell I’d shocked her, and I didn’t think she was the sort to shock easily. Finally, she let out a long breath. She said that Jesse made the decision to help me, so that wasn’t my fault. Nobody made him do it, she said. That was small comfort to me, though. “And our Lord Jesus ain’t never gonna forgive me for this,” she said, “but I ain’t got no sympathy for a man who’d rough up a woman, and what that Mr. Drapple done to you went way beyond that, didn’t it?”

I nodded. I felt grateful for her words—and somewhat vindicated by them as well—but that didn’t solve the predicament I was in.

She asked again how far along I was, her gaze dropping to my belly behind the smock I was still wearing, and I told her about two months. She stood up and walked to the window and I guessed she was looking out at the road, watching for the police. She had to be nervous, but she didn’t show it. She was a midwife. I thought she must be used to things going terribly wrong.

She asked me if I had anyplace else to go where the police wouldn’t be looking for me, and I shook my head. She let out a breath she must have been holding in, then said I would have to stay with them until the baby came.

I was stunned by the thought. I couldn’t imagine staying with them for seven months. The police would look for me here. I’d put all of them in too much danger.

“Jesse said to take care of you, so we gonna take care of you.”

I felt weak with gratitude and relief. I longed to turn myself over to someone stronger, someone smarter than I felt at that moment.

Then, Aunt Jewel told me to follow her into the hallway. She led me to a narrow closet. Pulling open the door, she revealed clothes hanging so tightly together they seemed to form a solid wall. I could smell mothballs. She told me that was where she and her cousins all hid when they were children. She reached through the wall of clothing. I heard something pop and above the hangers, I watched the rear wall give way, falling inward a few inches at an angle. Aunt Jewel told me to step into the space behind the wall to see if I would fit.

I pushed my way through the sea of clothing. The false wall had opened a bit like a door, allowing me to squeeze through the opening and into a suffocatingly narrow, dark space I imagined was teeming with spiders and who knew what else.

Aunt Jewel told me to push the wall back in place. I hesitated. I wanted