she didn't bar the door. "Have you come about the fire, are you from the insurance office?" "No, I'm afraid I'm not." I tried smiling, but she didn't respond. "Could you tell me what happened?"
"Why should I talk to you?" she asked. She slammed the trailer door in my face.
Bushmill was chock-full of reticent people.
I trudged back to the Jeep through the snow, feeling my blue jeans brush against my boots with the heavy feel of wet material. My feet were warm and dry, at least, and I made myself stamp the snow out of the treads of my boots before I hoisted myself up into the Jeep.
"Wait!" Bobbye Sunday slogged through the snow, holding her hands out for balance.
"I'm sorry I was so short with you," she said, when she'd reached the side of the Jeep. I'd shut myself in, but rolled down the window. "I lost so much in that fire," the midwife continued. "My patient records, the computers and software I'd just gotten ..."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm glad you weren't hurt."
"I keep telling myself that."
"Sometimes that's not much consolation, I guess."
"If you aren't from the insurance company..." "I just wanted to ask you about a patient you had, a baby you delivered, around three weeks ago? Here, at your office."
"Oh, I can't tell you about that," Bobbye Sunday said firmly. "That's private." She hesitated. "I usually go to the mother's house for delivery, but every now and then I deliver a baby-here. That's all I can say." I could tell she meant it, and I felt sorry for her. "Goodbye," I said, so she could get in out of the cold. "I hope your insurance comes through for you, soon."
She made a face at me, half doubting, half smiling. "Thanks." She turned and made her way through the yard back to the trailer door. So that was another door shut.
I found myself wondering about the so-timely fire, destroying the record of Regina's prenatal visits and delivery - if she had indeed delivered in Nurse Sunday's office - right after Rory came back to Corinth. When I thought of Rory's handsome young face, impossibly guileless, I heaved a long sigh. What would we do with Rory? Would he be safe, riding back into Corinth with Karl? Did I care? Would Martin be willing to keep the boy in the house overnight? I wasn't sure I would.
I was grateful to see the entrance to the farm, and even more grateful when I entered the kitchen to find Rory intact and Martin and Karl apparently holding on to their tempers. I tossed down the keys and my purse, realized I'd forgotten to take my boots off at the door, and knelt to dry them with a towel. "So, what have you guys been talking about?" I asked. I looked up at Karl.
"This fool - " he began, and then the window exploded. Since I'd been kneeling well away from it, I clearly saw the shards of glass flying into the kitchen, glinting in the fluorescent light. The glass sprayed Rory's left side as he sat slumped at the table, sprayed Martin's right side as he stood across from him, and grazed Karl who was perched beyond Rory on one corner.
And the bullet that had broken the glass, that bullet hit Rory in the neck on the left side, punching a mortal hole and exiting on the right, causing a shower of blood and tissue that rained on Karl, as the same bullet struck Karl's thigh, hitched over the corner of the table.
At that moment, it seemed, Martin screamed, "Down, down, down!" and took a flying leap to land on top of me, flattening me to the floor. A heartbeat later - a heartbeat Rory didn't have - I was facedown on the floor amid the glass and blood, my heart racing at a terrifying pace. Karl was screaming, and Rory bonelessly slid out of his chair and landed two feet away from me, blood pouring out of the wounds in his neck to puddle under him. His eyes were open. I shrieked without knowing I was going to do it. With Martin weighing me down, I lay shivering and shaking on the floor with Rory's blood spreading toward me. And then the kitchen was silent.
After the longest minute I'd ever lived through, no more bullets punched through the window. Martin gradually eased off me. I made myself crawl over to Karl, who had begun to moan steadily. The floor