Page 15 of The Souls of Lost Lake
Ava waited. It was awkward. Truly, it was. Her habit of overtalking was fast coming to the fore. She did that when she was nervous—which was all the time—talk. Talk like a chatter bug and hope no one could see inside of her.
“Preacher Pritchard—” she started.
“Noah,” he retorted.
“I ain’t callin’ you by your first name!” Ava’s voice squeaked. “Goin’ to be bad enough, me livin’ in your house! If’n I use your first name, then folks’ll think we done common-law married up. All familiar like. You really want that?”
He paled this time. “God, what have I gotten myself into?” Noah Pritchard squeezed his eyes tight.
“You prayin’ or swearin’?”
“Neither.” His response was under his breath, but Ava heard it. A preacher who cussed? He shook his head quickly then. “No. No, it was a prayer.”
Ava bit the inside of her bottom lip. She had a feeling he was lying now. Maybe not. But if he was, maybe he wasn’t the Goody Two-shoes she thought preachers were. She shifted her weight to her other foot, and the movement grabbed Noah’s attention.
“I’m so sorry, Miss Coons.” Seemed he’d taken her comment about first-name familiarity to heart and reapplied it to her as well. He stood up, wiping his trouser legs as if the porch step were filthy. “Come inside.” Seeming to arrive at some resigned acceptance of their situation, Noah hiked the three steps until his feet were planted on the porch. He reached for the front door and opened it.
She felt as though she was sinning just setting her backside on the bed in the parsonage’s guest room. Of course, Preacher Pritchard—Noah, if she used his first name and to the devil what people thought—had already high-tailed it from the place like God himself were about to set foot there and utter all sorts of condemnation. So for now, Ava was alone, and God was really quiet.
She swept her gaze over the room. It was simple. Whitewashed walls made the room brighter. She wondered briefly what sucker of a church member had to mix the lime and salt and water and what-have-you to make this room as pretty as it was. Ava had figured the parsonage would be dull, uninviting, even dark. Dark like hell itself. That was what the church preached anyway. Seeing the bright walls and the patchwork quilt on the bed made of green and blue gave Ava pause.
“I ain’t proper enough for this.” Ava stood from the bed as if poked by a porcupine. She noted the bureau on the far side of the small room, which had a dresser scarf of embroidered cotton stretched atop it. A hand mirror lay facedown. It tempted her, so Ava gave in—which was what sinners did when tempted—and moved to pick it up. Turning the mirror, she stared at her image as it reflected back at her.
Ava knew that behind their hands, townsfolk tittered about her looks. She was on the thin side but had a “nice bosom,” as Jipsy had once uncouthly declared. Her hair was blond like a hay bale, which made itnotcorn-silk yellow, a color Ava had always secretly wished for. Her eyes were blue like the sky, and someone told her once that the Coons family had been rumored to have Norway running in their blood. Maybe some Sweden. Ava hardly knew what that meant, except that they were other countries far away. She wasn’t stupid, she reminded herself as she counted the tiny brown moles that dotted her face in various places like freckles. She was just uneducated. That meant she hadn’t a clue where Norway or Sweden was, and whatweremoles on one’s face for anyway? They sure weren’t becoming like that porcelain doll complexion of Mrs. Sanderson’s.
“Contemplating your next kill?”
The wizened voice of an old woman broke the silence.
Ava dropped the hand mirror, and it clattered onto the dresser.
“Easy there. A broken mirror is a mighty long streak of bad luck, you know?” She was short. Squat. Barely five-foot, if that, and her chin rested almost on her chest. Ava wasn’t sure if the old woman really had a neck—oh yes, it was there—and her brown eyes swallowed her face that was otherwise as wrinkled as package paper balled up and tossed away. The woman hardly blinked as she eyed Ava with an intensity that was both curious and knowing.
“Did you know that about forty years ago a woman in Massachusetts hacked her parents to death in their bed with an ax?”
Ava wished she hadn’t moved from the bed so she could let her knees buckle and flop down onto the mattress in shock at the woman’s audacity.
The elderly lady didn’t stop there. She took a few steps into the room and eyed the mirror for cracks. “She didn’t go to prison for it either. Guess it’s hard to prove a woman can wield an ax as well as a man.” A little chuckle, and then the brown eyes rested on Ava again.
Ava squirmed. It’d be nice if the lady left her alone. In peace. But apparently the town’s doubts had crept in through the parsonage door. Fine job Preacher Pritchard was doing of protecting her!
“I’m RamonaB. Hancock—not related to the late president—but Iamthe great-aunt of Mildred Hancock from Madison.” She waited as though that would ring some bell of recognition in Ava’s mind.
Ava stared blankly back at her.
“You can call me Hanny. Ramona was my mother’s name, and God forbid I even try to follow in her footsteps, rest her soul. Hancock is just so plain lofty, it makes me sound like I’m running for office myself.” Hanny patted the side of her hair, which was neatly pulled back into a knot at the nape. It was white, like snow, and spectacles perched on her nose. “Now, what’s this I hear about Noah putting you in such a pickle?”
“I think I did that to him.” Ava finally found her voice. Whichwas dangerous, ’cause once she found her voice, it rarely shut up. “He volunteered to take me in, and of course what was I to do? People think I killed that man, and I didn’t, but no one will believe me.”
“Except Noah,” Hanny inserted.
“Except Noah,” Ava nodded. “I think,” she added. He’d never outrightsaidhe thought she was innocent.
Hanny walked past Ava to the lone window and peeked out. Her head didn’t come up to the first trim piece that cut the window into a half pane. “Can’t blame folk. They say Matthew was quite a sight after he was axed.”
It didn’t seem to faze Hanny—talking of murder.
“I didn’t kill him, though.” Ava couldn’t help but insist once more.
