and butter? So that’s what I’m going to do. I will go home to Five Rocks. Butfirst I’m going to shoot them dead.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Olivia didn’t worry that God, if one existed, would know she had shot the
Stubblefields. It was the right thing to do. She was going to hold her gun on them and threaten to shoot them dead, unless they told her what they’d done to
Mourning. And after they told her, she was going to shoot them dead anyway. It
wouldn’t make things right – nothing would ever do that – but at least she would
know they no longer breathed the same air she did.
She wistfully surveyed her little homestead, thinking that perhaps once the
Stubblefields were gone she could stay there. She could take a boat back to Five
Rocks, find Mourning working at the Feed & Grain, and bring him back. If she
wasn’t pregnant. And if she didn’t get arrested for killing Iola and Filmore.
Only then did it occur to her – Mourning is the one most likely to be blamed
for that. If a sheriff finds two white people murdered at about the same time that
a stranger – a black man – disappears, who’s he going to go after? Well, if it comes to that, I’ll just have to confess. Then she frowned. If Mourning is
arrested in Michigan, there’s no way I’ll ever hear about it in Five Rocks. No one is going to be writing me letters. No one in Fae’s Landing even knows where
we came from, except our wonderful neighbors, the Stubblefields. Did I ever
mention the name of the town to Jeremy? I don’t think so, but even if I did, small
chance that he’d been paying any attention.
Jeremy. She was never going to see him again. She paused for a moment,
noting how totally indifferent she was to that fact. But she should call on him.
Stopping to say good-bye was the natural thing to do and she didn’t want him or
anyone else to think she had run off in a panic.
She would tell Jeremy that Mourning had left, but when? When was the last
time Jeremy had seen him? Probably three weeks ago. She would say that
Mourning had left a few days after that. Left to go where? Back home. Why?
They’d decided they weren’t cut out for farming, that’s all. She was just stopping
by to wish Jeremy well. She’d say she’d just come from bidding her farewells to
the Stubblefields, providing testimony that they’d still been alive and well weeks
after Mourning left.
She picked up a stick and poked at the fire, searching for inconsistencies in her story. A wry smile crossed her face as she thought, Jeremy not believing what
I’m going to tell him about when Mourning left isn’t the problem. Jeremy nothearing a word I say is more like it. I’ll have to think of a way to say it that willgrab his attention. If the Law comes asking about Mourning, Jeremy has toremember that he left Fae’s Landing weeks before the murders.
I can think about that later, she thought. What I have to do now is pack up
and get out of here before the sun comes up. Way before Filmore gets here. ThenI have to figure out how I’m going to take him and his she-devil wife by surprise.
It wouldn’t be easy, the way their cabin stood in that large clearing. The front
of it was a good forty paces from the woods and plowed fields spread out from
the other three sides. They were sure to see her coming with her shotgun. She could be on the trail before sun-up tomorrow, lying in wait for Filmore, but if she
shot him close to their place, Iola would hear it and come running with that pistol of hers. And if he was found near Olivia’s cabin, folks would be even more likely to put it on Mourning. She’d have to drag the body off the trail and
bury it. She sighed and stirred the fire. It was all too complicated. She wanted to
shoot them and walk away. The last thing she wanted to do was touch Filmore’s
stinking carcass.