Wednesday's Child. Gayle Wilson
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embark on this knight-errant foolishness.
Susan turned at the question, meeting his eye. “I’m talking about the truck that ran me off the road.”
The truck that ran me off the road…. There was only one possible interpretation of that.
“Are you saying someone forced you off the road?”
“I know it sounds ridiculous, but…that’s what he did.”
“He?”
“I guess I just assumed it was a man, maybe because of the size of the truck. I didn’t actually see the driver.”
“But you’re sure he deliberately ran you off the road?” Jeb made no attempt to hide his skepticism. That kind of thing didn’t happen around here.
“Yes.” She offered no explanation for her certainty. And made no defense of it.
“Why would someone run you off the road?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he was impatient because I was being careful. Or because I blinked my lights to get him to turn his down. All I know is he headed directly toward me, and that he was flying.”
When she’d mentioned the driver being impatient, he had pictured someone coming up behind her as she was negotiating an unfamiliar highway in the rain. The part about blinking her lights didn’t seem to fit that scenario.
“He was behind you? Or approaching you?”
“Both. Actually…” She took a breath, seeming to gather control. “He approached a couple of times. During the last one it was obvious that if I didn’t move over he would ram my car. Since he had a distinct size advantage…”
“You’re telling me someone went past you and then turned around and came back in order to force you off the road.”
“Or maybe he just made a U-turn,” she said.
As he had done. Which meant she’d been watching his arrival from her hiding place. And if what she had just claimed happened really did take place, it was no wonder she hadn’t wanted to be waiting inside her car when…
“You thought I was the person who ran you off the road.”
“I thought it was a distinct possibility. He’d already made a couple of passes at me.”
“After you went off the road?”
“I didn’t mean that. He passed me coming from town and then turned around and came up behind me. When he went around my car, he sat on his horn. Then the next time…That’s when he came at me. When I saw you go by, all I knew was that the size and color of your truck were the same as the other.”
He couldn’t tell from her tone if she still suspected he might have been its driver. Of course, she had responded to his call once she’d recognized him.
“I can’t believe anybody around here would do that.”
“I thought it might be kids. Showing off. Terrorizing the tourists.”
He thought about the possibility. His few encounters with the local population during the months he’d spent here hadn’t extended to any of the teenage population. Judging by the acts of violence the papers reported in other places, he supposed it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that some local kids, drunk or stoned, might have pulled this kind of stunt.
“You are going to report what happened to the sheriff?”
“I don’t have a lot to tell him. I doubt big, dark pickups are all that rare in this area.”
They weren’t, of course, as evidenced by the one they were sitting in. His was perhaps bigger than most, but a lot of the local farmers used their trucks for hauling supplies and produce and even for towing trailers filled with livestock. All of which called for heavy-duty vehicles.
“Besides, I get the feeling Sheriff Adams thinks I should just go back home and wait for someone else to figure out what happened to my daughter. The problem is, if I do that, I don’t think anyone ever will.”
He knew from town gossip Lorena had repeated to him today that most people believed the baby’s body must have been washed downriver. Under certain conditions the currents in the Escatawpa could certainly be strong enough to take a child out of a father’s hands, which according to Lorena was Wayne Adams’s explanation of what had happened.
“She would be eight years old now,” Susan went on, the anger he’d heard before no longer in her voice, leaving it flat and hard. “Everyone said she looked like Richard, but…with babies that age, it’s so hard to tell. And now…”
He waited through the silence, knowing there was nothing he could say that would temper the pain of her loss. Despite the passage of time, it was all still there in her voice.
Her chin lifted again as she swallowed the emotion that had threatened her control. Slowly she shook her head.
“I know what you’re thinking, but I’d know if she were dead. I’d know.” The declaration was almost fierce, brooking no argument. “She isn’t. She’s out there somewhere. Without anyone of her own.”
“Ms. Chandler—”
“That was the one thought I clung to all those years. That she was with Richard. I hated him for taking her away from me. I cursed him for not telling me where she was or why he’d taken her, but…no matter how bitter I was toward him, there was no doubt in my mind that he loved her. And I knew he’d take care of her.”
The rain pounding on the roof was the only sound in the cab after her last impassioned sentence. Even their breathing seemed suspended.
“Now…” she said again, turning to face him. “Don’t you see? Now I’m all she has. I just can’t let her go on thinking that no one has been looking for her.”
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