“I’m here, Maggie,” he breathed. “I’m here, Momma.”
“You’re a good boy, Malcolm,” she whispered without opening her eyes. “But you’ve gotta carry me home. Selfish of me… to wait so long.”
They were her last words. Malcolm held her hand in both of his and knelt by her bed as minutes and then hours passed. The creak of footfalls behind him told him that Violet entered the room at least once, but he didn’t turn. At some point, he drifted off, his forehead resting against her arm.
When he blinked awake again, Maggie’s skin was already cold. He sat back, studied the peaceful expression on her face, and forced himself to release her. He stood, knees and back stiff despite his youth, and glanced at the window. Maggie had been true to her word. The horizon had turned pink and gold and peach, and the night was in full retreat.
He went to the glass and looked out.
Across the street, in among the branches of the willow tree, the raven still waited.
Malcolm balled his fists and thought of the gun on his bed, but he could feel the weight of his mother’s presence. Somehow, now that she was dead, the things she had expected of him meant more than they ever had.
He went to the kitchen, took the phone from its cradle on the wall, and dialed the funeral home. Paxson Keates himself picked up on the first ring, as if he’d been expecting the call. As if he’d written it down in his appointment book because Maggie Wise had warned him in advance.
“Mr. Keates, it’s Malcolm Wise.”
“Hello, Malcolm. I’ll be right over.”
As if, like the raven, he’d been waiting.
5
Ruth Swickard woke to the smell of coffee, her bedroom windows rattling with the roar of the November wind. The radiator ticked and hissed, but she knew the promise of heat would not compare to the warmth beneath her blankets. The feather pillow wrapped around her head, and she burrowed deeper.
The bed creaked as she felt the weight of her husband crawling toward her.
“You look very cozy,” Bill said.
She smiled without opening her eyes. “You made coffee. Does that mean you’re taking over breakfast duties today?”
This was the best part of the late fall and winter. They still had plenty of work to do around the farm, but after long months of tending and harvesting, the brutal cold had swept in and the ground turned so hard that nothing could be done about it. No more getting up before dawn, at least for a while. Sometimes that meant breakfast in bed, and sometimes it meant other things.
“I could be persuaded,” Bill said.
Dragging the blankets down, he slid in beside her. Only his feet were cold.
Bill wouldn’t be trying to get frisky if he hadn’t already seen Benjy off to school, which meant it was just them in the house. Careful to stay burrowed, she touched his chest and trailed her fingers southward.
“Thank you for the coffee,” she said.
“Taste it before you thank me.”
“I just need something warm in the morning.”
Bill laughed softly. He kissed her as her fingers found what they’d been seeking. Suddenly, it felt too warm beneath the blankets, and it was Ruth who tossed them aside.Good morning, indeed, she thought.
As she straddled him, the house jumped, just once, a jolt so powerful that the windows shattered and the opposite wall cracked open. Bill shouted to Jesus and scrambled off the bed, but froze when he saw the shards of broken glass on the floor. The cold wind blasted in.
“My God,” Ruth said. “An earthquake.”
She drew her legs beneath her and cloaked herself in the blankets. Bill started explaining that it couldn’t be an earthquake, that a single shake didn’t qualify. It felt more like a bomb, he said, but there’d been no sound to accompany the jolt, no explosion. Ruth hadn’t needed him to tell her any of that, but she knew he was just talking to talk—that they were both scared, and nothing scared a man like Bill Swickard more thanbeingscared.
Wrapped in blankets, Ruth crawled off the other side of the mattress, opened the wardrobe, and retrieved Bill’s house shoes.
“Put these on,” she said, tossing them onto the bed.
He looked at her as if she’d gone insane—throwing his shoes on the bed, when she’d have scolded him if he’d done the same. But dirty sheets were the least of her concern. She let the blankets slide down to pool around her ankles, cold air stinging her bare skin while she struggled into a thick sweater and a pair of Bill’s long woolens. She slid into house shoes.
