“It’s been… It’s so unreal that…” he started. Then he wept, and I waited. When he finally looked up at me, he pointed at my dirty jeans and changed the subject. “Were you out digging again?”
‘How did you know I—”
Michael smiled, ever so slightly. “Clara Jefferies, you grew up in Alber. Things are different here, sure, but not that different. People still see. They still talk. Everyone knows about your digging. It’s gossiped about among the women. I think they find it strange.”
All those times, I’d never noticed anyone, but they’d kept tabs on me. “Okay,” I said. “Then this will make it easy. If they’re monitoring me, they watch others as well. What rumors have you heard? What do you know?”
“You’re talking about…?”
“Who do you think did this?”
Michael drew in a ragged breath. “I can’t say that I know who could be responsible for this kind of evil,” he said. “I’ve been asking myself that all day long, ever since the sheriff rang our doorbell and told Reba and me what happened at the ranch. Who would murder my sweet granddaughter, Sybille? And little Benjamin, just learning to ride his tricycle? Laurel and Anna, the kind of women who were always doing for others?”
“You must have theories?”
“I…” he started and I thought he might say something helpful, give me a name, but then he gulped down his words. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“Okay, but we all have people who don’t like us. I’m sure Jacob had some enemies,” I suggested. “Who are they?”
Michael shook his head, the tears rolled again, and he tried to brush them away, but the saturated handkerchief left shiny streaks. “Jacob and Carl were gone from Alber for years, so I don’t know of any troubles they might have had. They’ve only been home a year or so,” he said. “I never heard of any hard feelings in town or any altercations with others, certainly nothing so serious that anyone would do this horri…”
His voice broke on the last few words.
“You must have some possibilities in mind,” I pushed. “I need to know what you know about your son, especially who might have any reason to—”
“Michael, tell her about Myles Thompkins.” Reba, Michael’s first wife and Jacob’s mother, blurted out. She’d walked out of the glassed-in ICU room immediately to our left and stood beside her husband in her long prairie dress.
“We’ve known that boy his whole life, Reba. Myles wouldn’t…” Michael objected. “Don’t say such things. Myles has never been anything but kind to us. He’d never do something so evil.”
“How do you know?” she said, jeering at her husband. “What makes you think he wouldn’t be angry enough to try to kill our son? To slaughter Anna and our grandchildren? To take revenge against Laurel?”
“Woman, be still,” Michael ordered. “We know his people, and they’re a good, faithful family. Casting aspersions on others, Reba, is beneath you.”
The Thompkins family was one of Alber’s oldest. Half the town was either related to one of the Thompkins by blood or marriage. I remembered Myles from my years as a teacher at the grade school in town. An unusually shy kid with shiny dark hair and intelligent blue eyes, Myles was razor-sharp. In second grade, he tutored third and fourth graders in math. In junior high, he snuck into the high school’s chemistry lab to try out a liquid nitrogen experiment that ended up shattering a wall of windows.
“Myles Thompkins?” I inquired. “Why would he hurt—”
“Because he loved Laurel, and she loved him,” Reba said, casting an angry look at her husband. An angular woman, she had her gray hair anchored in a French twist in the back and it swung in an S-curve in the front, where bobby pins kept it out of her eyes. “The whole town knew those two were smitten with one another. All through high school, they planned to be together, and I wish that had happened. Myles was madder than a castrated bull when Laurel became betrothed to Jacob. I wish that girl had never wed our son.”
“Reba, don’t say such things,” Michael objected. “Laurel was a good wife to Jacob.”
“A reluctant wife,” Reba corrected. “Jacob asked the prophet for Laurel’s hand, and what our son got was a wife who loved another.”
At that, Michael dropped his head and the tears came again. “Laurel was a good woman,” he whispered. “She did what the prophet instructed. She was obedient, kind, and—”
“And probably got Jacob near killed, Anna and our beautiful