“On the way to Pueblo, did she show you where her car had gone off the highway?” Joe asked.
“She was too rattled to recognize the exact spot in the darkness and all. And we couldn’t be stopping every half mile or whatever to see if maybe this was the right embankment or then we’d never get the poor girl home to bed.”
Another timer buzzed.
Putting on the quilted mitten again and opening the door on the second oven, Mercy said, “She was so popped, all sleepy-eyed. She didn’t care about tow trucks, just about getting home to bed.”
Joe felt certain that there had been no car. Rose walked out of the burning meadow, into the woods, all but blind as she left the blaze for the dark, but desperately determined to get away before anyone discovered that she was alive, somehow sure that the 747 had been brought down because of her. Terrified, in a state of shock, horrified by the carnage, lost in the wilds, she had preferred to risk death from starvation and exposure rather than be found by a rescue team and perhaps fall into the hands of her eerily powerful enemies. Soon, by great good luck, she reached a ridge from which she was able to see, through the trees, the distant lights of the Loose Change Ranch.
Pushing aside her empty coffee cup, Barbara said, “Mercy, where did you take this woman in Pueblo? Do you remember the address?”
Holding the baking sheet half out of the oven to examine the cookies, Mercy said, “She never told me an address, just directed me street to street until we got to the house.”
No doubt it was one that Rose had chosen at random, as it was unlikely that she knew anyone in Pueblo.
“Did you see her go inside?” Joe asked.
“I was going to wait until she unlocked the door and was inside. But she thanked me, said God bless, and I should scoot back home.”
“Could you find the place again?” Barbara asked.
Deciding that the cookies needed an additional minute, Mercy slid the tray back into the oven, pulled off the mitten, and said, “Sure. Nice big house in a real nice neighbourhood. But it wasn’t Rachel’s. It belonged to her partner in the medical practice. Did I say she was a doctor down in Pueblo?”
“But you didn’t actually see her go into this place?” Joe asked. He assumed that Rose waited until Mercy was out of sight, then walked away from the house and found transportation out of Pueblo.
Mercy’s face was red and dewy from the oven heat. Plucking two paper towels off a roll and blotting the sweat from her brow, she said, “No. Like I said, I dropped them off in front, and they went up the walk.”
“Them?”
“The poor sleepy little thing. Such a dear. She was the daughter of Rachel’s partner.”
Startled, Barbara glanced at Joe, then leaned forward in her chair toward Mercy. “There was a child?”
“Such a little angel, sleepy but not cranky at all.”
Joe flashed back to Mercy’s mention of “seat belts,” plural, and to other things she had said that suddenly required a more literal interpretation than he had given them. “You mean Rose… Rachel had a child with her?”
“Well, didn’t I say?” Mercy looked puzzled, tossing the damp paper towel into a waste can.
“We didn’t realize there was a child,” Barbara said.
“I told you,” Mercy said, perplexed by their confusion. “Back a year ago, when the fella came around from your Board, I told him all about Rachel and the little girl, about Rachel being a witness.”
Looking at Joe, Barbara said, “I didn’t remember that. I guess I did well even to remember this place at all.”
Joe’s heart turned over, turned like a wheel long stilled on a rusted axle.
Unaware of the tremendous impact that her revelation had on Joe, Mercy opened the oven door to check the cookies once more.
“How old was the girl?” he asked.
“Oh, about four or five,” Mercy said.
Premonition weighed on Joe’s eyes, and when he closed them, the darkness behind his lids swarmed with possibilities that he was terrified to consider.