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Nick rested his hand on his baton as he cautiously made his way to Sally. She was leaning against the wall now, her torn, stained dress splattered with blood. A jagged cut marred her lower lip, and already a purplish bruise was seeping across her jaw.
He couldn’t readily recall how many times he’d been here, how many times he’d stopped Chuck from killing his wife. It was a bad situation, this marriage, and had been long before Chuck got laid off at the mill, but since then, it had become a nightmare. Chuck spent all day at Zoe’s Tavern, sucking down beers he couldn’t afford and getting mad. By the time he crawled off his bar stool and made his stumbling way home, he was as mean as a junkyard dog, and when he pulled his broken-down pickup into his driveway, he was ready to do some serious damage. The only one around was his wife.
Nick touched Sally’s shoulder.
She made a gasping sound and cringed. “Don’t—”
“Sally, it’s me. Nick Delacroix. ”
She slowly opened her eyes, and when she did, he saw the bottomless well of her despair, and her shame. She brought a shaking, bruised hand to her face and tried to push the blood-matted hair from her face. Tears welled in her blackened eyes and streaked down her battered cheeks. “Oh, Nick . . . Did the Robertses call you guys again?” She edged away from him and straightened, trying to look normal and in control. “It’s nothing, really. Chuckie just had a bad day, is all. The paper company isn’t looking for any employees. . . . ”
Nick sighed. “You can’t keep doing this, Sally. One of these days he’s going to kill you. ”
She tried to smile. It was a wobbly, unbalanced failure, and it tore at Nick’s heart. As always, Sally made him think of his mother, and all the excuses she’d made for alcohol over the years. “Oh, no, not my Chuckie. He gets a little frustrated, is all. ”
“I’m going to take Chuck in this time, Sally. I want you to make a complaint. ”
Chuck lurched from his place at the corner, stumbling into the bed. “She won’t do that to me, willya, honey? She knows I don’t mean nothing by it. It’s just that she makes me so damned mad sometimes. There wasn’t nothin’ in the whole house to eat when I got home. A man needs somethin’ to eat, ain’t that right, Nick?”
Sally glanced worriedly at her husband. “I’m sorry, Chuckie. I didn’t expect you home s’early. ”
Defeat rounded Nick’s shoulders and washed through him in a cold wave. “Let
me help you, Sally,” he said softly, leaning toward her.
She patted his forearm. “I don’t need no help, Nick. But thanks for comin’ by. ”
Nick stood there, staring down at her. She seemed to be shrinking before his eyes, losing weight. The ragged cut of her cotton dress was too big for her; it hung off her narrow shoulders and lay limply against her body. He knew as certainly as he knew his own name that one day he would answer one of these calls and Sally would be dead. “Sally—”
“Please, Nick,” she said, her voice trembling, her eyes filling with tears. “Please, don’t . . . ”
Nick turned away from her. There was nothing he could do to help her. The realization caused an ache deep inside him, and left him wondering why in the hell he did this job. There was no success, or damned little of it. He couldn’t do much of anything to Chuck unless Chuck killed his wife, and of course, then it would be too late.
He stepped over an upended laundry basket and took hold of Chuck’s collar. “Come on, Chuck. You can sleep it off downtown. ”
He ignored Chuck’s whining and refused to look at Sally again. He didn’t need to. Sally would be following along behind them, whispering words of apology to the husband who’d broken her bones, promising to be “better” when he came home, vowing to have dinner on the table on time.
It didn’t sicken Nick, her behavior. Unfortunately, he understood Sally. He had been like her in his youth, had followed his mother around like a hungry dog, begging for scraps of affection, taking whatever affection she would occasionally fling his way.
Yes, he understood too well why Sally stayed with Chuck. And he knew, too, that it would end badly for both of them. But there was nothing he could do to help them. Not a goddamn thing except to throw Chuck in jail to sleep off his drunk, and wait for the next domestic disturbance call on Old Mill Road.
Izzy Delacroix lay curled in a tight little ball on Lurlene’s guest bed. The pillow didn’t smell right—not the right smell at all. That was one of the things that made Izzy cry almost every night. Since her mommy went to Heaven, nothing smelled right, not the sheets or the pillows or Izzy’s clothes.
Even Miss Jemmie didn’t smell like she was s’posed to. Izzy clutched the doll to her chest, stroking her pretty yellow hair with the two fingers she had left on her right hand, her thumb and pointy finger.
At first it had sorta scared her, when she’d figured out that she was disappearing. She’d started to reach for a crayon, and halfway there, she’d noticed that her pinky finger was sort of blurry and gray. The next day it was invisible. She had told her daddy and Lurlene, and she could tell by the way they looked at her that it scared them, too. And that icky doctor—it had made him look at her like she was a bug.
She stared at the two fingers that remained on her right hand. It’s goin’away, Mommy.
She waited for an answer, but none came. Lots of times, she imagined her mommy was right beside her, and she could talk to her just by thinking the words.
She wished she could make it happen right now, but it only seemed to happen at special times—at the purply time between day and night.
She needed to talk to her mommy about what had happened the other day. It had been so bad. One minute, she’d been looking at the pictures in her book, and the next thing she knew, there was a scream inside her. She knew it wasn’t good to scream in school—the other kids already thought she was stupid—and she’d tried really, really hard to keep her mouth shut. She’d clenched her hands into tight balls and squeezed her eyes shut so hard she’d seen stars in the darkness.
She had felt so scared and so lonely she couldn’t breathe right. The scream had started as a little yelp that slipped out. She had clamped a hand over her mouth but it hadn’t helped.
All the kids had stared at her, pointing and laughing.
