She looked up at him, her reddened eyes both calm and wondering.
"That's the second time you've been there when Nat and I needed you," she said. "Are you our guardian angel, Ralph?"
"Maybe," he said. "Maybe I am. Listen, Helen-there isn't much time.
Gretchen is dead."
She nodded and began to cry. "I knew it. I didn't want to, but somehow I did, just the same."
"I'm very sorry."
"We were having such a good time when they came-I mean, we were nervous, but there was also a lot of laughing and a lot of chatter. We were going to spend the day getting ready for the speech tonight. The rally and Susan Day's speech."
"It's tonight I have to ask you about," Ralph said, speaking as gently as he could. "Do you think they'll still-"
"We were making breakfast when they came." She spoke as if she hadn't heard him; Ralph supposed she hadn't. Nat was peeking over Helen's shoulder, and although she was still coughing, she had stopped crying. Safe within the circle of her mother's arms, she looked from Ralph to Lois and then back to Ralph again with lively curiosity.
"Helen-" Lois began.
"Look! See there?" Helen pointed to an old brown Cadillac parked beside the ramshackle shed which had been the cider-press in the days when Ralph and Carolyn had occasionally come out here; it had probably served High Ridge as a garage. The Caddy was in bad shape-cracked windshield, dented rocker panels, one headlight crisscrossed with masking tape. The bumper was layered with prolife stickers.
"That's the car they came in. They drove around to the back of the house as if they meant to put it in our garage. I think that's what fooled us. They drove right around to the back as if they belonged here." She contemplated the car for a moment, then returned her smoke-reddened, unhappy eyes to Ralph and Lois. "Somebody should have paid attention to the stickers on the damned thing."
Ralph suddenly thought of Barbara Richards back at WomanCare-Barbie Richards, who had relaxed when Lois approached. It hadn't mattered to her that Lois was reaching for something in her purse; what had mattered was that Lois was a woman. Sandra McKay had been driving the Cadillac; Ralph didn't need to ask Helen to know that.
They had seen the woman and ignored the bumperstickers. We are family; I've got all my sisters with me.
"When Deanie said the people getting out of the car were dressed in army clothes and carrying guns, we thought it was a joke. All of us but Gretchen, that is. She told us to get downstairs as quick as we could. Then she went into the parlor. To call the police, I suppose.
I should have stayed with her."
"No," Lois said, and slipped a lock of Natalie's fine-spun auburn hair through her fingers. "You had this one to look out for, didn't you? And still do."
"I suppose," she said dully. "I suppose I do. But she was my friend, Lois. My friend."
"I know, dear."
Helen's face twisted like a rag, and she began to cry. Natalie looked at her mother with an expression of comical astonishment for a moment, and then she began to cry, too.
"Helen," Ralph said. "Helen, listen to me. I have something to ask you. It's very, very important. Are you listening?"
Helen nodded, but she went on crying. Ralph had no idea if she was really hearing him or not. He glanced at the corner of the building, wondering how long it would be before the police charged around it, then took a deep breath. "Do you think there's any chance that they'll still hold the rally tonight? Any chance at all? You were as close to Gretchen as anybody. Tell me what you think."
Helen stopped crying and looked at him with still, wide eyes, as if she couldn't believe what she had just heard. Then those eyes began to fill with a frightening depth of anger.
"How can you ask? How can you even ask?"
"Well... because..." He stopped, unable to go on.
Ferocity was the last thing he had expected.
"If they stop us now, they win," Helen said. "Don't you see that?
Gretchen's dead, Merrilee's dead, High Ridge is burning to the ground with everything some of these women own inside, and if they stop us now they win."
One part of Ralph's mind-a deep part-now made a terrible comparison. Another part, one that loved Helen, moved to block it, but it moved too late. Her eyes looked like Charlie Pickering's eyes when Pickering had been sitting