So Cold the River(117)

There was no rain now, but it had evidently come down hard throughout the night, because her yard was filled with puddles and the tree branches hung heavy. The wind had not fallen off in the way that it typically did after a front passed through, but continued to blow, the porch a choir of chimes as she moved toward the front door. She felt the force of it as soon as she got the door open, an unusually warm wet wind for dawn. Where was all that wind coming from? She put it at just below twenty miles an hour.

She was wrong. According to the wind gauges, it was blowing twenty-two, this after the storm had finished its work. The barometer was still falling, but the temperature had risen overnight. That and the wet, rain-soaked earth would give this new front lots to work with. There’d be storms aplenty today, and some of them might be fierce.

Down at the end of the porch a flash of white caught her eye, and she took a few shuffling steps and leaned over the rail and stared into her own backyard. Way down by the tree line, parked close to the woods but carefully positioned behind her house, was an old pickup truck. Now, who in the world could that belong to? It had come in during the night, clearly, but there was no one behind the wheel.

“Get the license and call the police,” she said softly, but the truck was a long way off across the muddy yard, and suddenly she didn’t feel like being exposed out there, wanted to get back inside with the doors locked and the phone in her hand.

Her hearing wasn’t what it used to be, and the yard was noisy with the wind and the chimes, but still the man must have moved silent as a deer because she was absolutely unaware of his presence until she turned back to face the door. He was standing in front of it with a shotgun hooked over his forearm. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him just yet. She gave a start, as anyone would, took a small step backward. He gave a cold smile, and it was then that she recognized him.

Josiah Bradford.

A local ne’er-do-well, not one she’d have troubled her mind over in the past, but he was more than that to her today. He was Campbell’s last descendant, and something mighty strange was going on with Campbell.

“Josiah,” she said, trying to put a stern touch in her voice even though she was standing with her hand at her heart, “what on earth do you think you’re doing?”

“You have a reputation for unrivaled hospitality,” he said, and his voice raised a chill in her because it did not fit the man, did not fit even the time. “For offering housing and help. I’m seeking both.”

“I never opened my door to a man with a gun before. And I won’t start now. So go on your way, Josiah. Please go on your way.”

He shook his head slowly. Then he shifted the gun from one arm to the other. When he did it, the muzzle passed right over her.

“Mrs. McKinney,” he said. “Anne. I’m going to need you to open that door.”

She didn’t speak. He reached out and twisted the knob and opened the door.

“Would you look at that.” He turned back, the artificial smile gone from his face, and pointed the gun at her. “After you, ma’am. After you.”

There wasn’t a neighbor in view of the house, and Anne’s voice would have been lost to that wind. Her car was in the carport on the other side of the porch, and the road stretched beyond that, kind neighbors in either direction, but Anne McKinney’s days of running were many years past. Those much-loathed, sturdy tennis shoes on her feet might help get her up the stairs, but they wouldn’t get her to the road. She took another look at the gun, and then she walked past Josiah Bradford and into her empty house.

He came in behind her and closed the door and locked it. She was walking away from him, toward the living room, but he said, “Slow down there,” and she came to a stop. He walked into the kitchen, took the phone down and put it to his ear and smiled.

“You seem to be having some trouble with your service. Going to need to get a repair crew out for that.”

She said, “What do you want? Why are you in my home?”

He frowned, wandering out of the kitchen and into the living room and settling into her rocking chair. He waved at the couch, and she walked over and sat. There was a phone right beside her hand, but that wouldn’t be any help now.

“It wasn’t my desire to end up here,” he said, “just the unfortunate way of the world. Circumstance, Mrs. McKinney. Circumstance conspired to bring me here, and now I must take some measure to gain control of that circumstance. Understand?”

She could hardly take in his words for the sheer sound of his voice, that unsettling timbre it held, a quality of belonging to another person.