Maybe, maybe not. The reasons didn’t matter. The fact was that the future was no longer something she had the confidence to face. She loved God, but she was afraid of His angel, and taking herself out of the equation seemed like the easiest and best solution to the problem.
The only question was: what to do about Tad and Mariah? It would be wrong to leave them alone; there was no way she could do that. It would be better for all of them if she killed her husband and daughter first, then took her own life. That way, they would be together.
She smiled to herself, feeling calm and reassured. Finishing her orange juice, she walked over to Tad’s gun case and chose a rifle. Mariah wouldn’t be home for another eight hours, Tad for ten, maybe twelve, but it didn’t hurt to be prepared. She would load the rifle, set up a chair in front of the door and wait. She’d shoot Mariah when she walked through the doorway—in the face, so it would be quick—then she’d do the same to Tad when he returned, and then she would kill herself.
Maybe, if she was lucky, the angel wouldn’t get them then.
****
Jeri finished her route early, unnerved by the amount of mail that had remained uncollected in various boxes. It wasn’t her place to check up on people—her job was just to deliver the mail—but after seeing the letters, catalogs and bills she’d delivered yesterday and the day before piling up untouched, she had been sorely tempted to get out of the car and knock on doors to make sure everyone was all right.
Only…
Only she didn’t really want to. She was afraid to know the truth because she suspected that more than one of the mail recipients was not sick or on vacation or incapacitated but…
Dead.
Yes, dead. That was her fear, and she didn’t want it confirmed. So she forced packages and envelopes into overstuffed boxes with no room to hold them and forced the doors closed, wondering what she would do tomorrow if the mail was still not collected.
She had stopped delivering to the ranches several days ago, but from various points on her route she could still see Cameron Holt’s scarecrows, and even at a distance those things freaked her out. She’d told Don about them, had even driven out with him to so he could see for himself, and he had indeed thought they were freaky. But he didn’t seem to feel the threat that she did, and she wasn’t sure he totally believed her story about the scarecrows looking at her, about one of them actually climbing off its pole. Like everyone else, he knew that a lot of weird things had been happening around Magdalena since New Year’s Eve. But he was one of those people who seemed to have been affected positively. She had been terrorized by those damn scarecrows, beset by complaints from postal customers, and now half of the people on her route weren’t even picking up their mail.
Dead
She hadn’t even been in the mood to have sex for the past two weeks.
But Don was in great spirits these days. More people had dropped off equipment to be repaired at his shop than ever before, and he’d almost earned enough money to buy that new outboard motor he wanted. Strangely enough, despite his good mood, he hadn’t tried to make love to her, hadn’t asked for sex or even hinted about it, and Jeri wondered if he was seeing someone else. That would certainly account for his change in attitude.
The thought made her depressed and, on a whim, she drove to Don’s repair shop instead of heading home. He wasn’t there; the place was locked up. He wasn’t at the house, either, and Jeri’s heart dropped in her chest. She tried calling him on his cell phone, but she had no bars, so, leaving the ranch mail in the car, she hurried inside to use the land line. She was able to reach him, but he must have had his phone turned off because all she got was a message. She hung up, feeling worried and frustrated.
For a moment, she seriously considered getting back in the car and driving around, looking for him. But she knew how paranoid that was and thought it would be better to give him the benefit of the doubt, to wait and then ask him where he’d been this morning when she saw him.
Besides, she had to take out that ranch mail in case one of the recipients came by to pick it up.
Like Cameron Holt.
She shivered.
Getting a quick drink of water from the kitchen, Jeri walked back outside—
Where there was a scarecrow standing in her yard.
She jumped, screamed, and immediately rushed back inside, slamming the door behind her. She had seen the scarecrow for only a second, but it was the closest she had ever been to one of them, and she had noticed the specificity of its mud features, the broadness of its nose, the slightly mismatched eyes, the high cheeks, the hint of an overbite in the mouth. Leaning with her back against the door, breathing hard, she wondered who had sculpted that face and how, who had made those oversized clothes—