(LB2) Shakespeare's Landlord by Charlaine Harris Read Free Book Online

felt the skin on the back of my neck prickle with anxiety. I’d worked with Alvah side by side on many mornings, but the woman at the table seemed altogether different.
    Alvah suffers from a pinched nerve in her back and is having increasing problems getting around, but she is normally a practical, good-natured woman with decided ideas about how she wants things done and a plain way of expressing them. She could offend by this straightforwardness, and I’ve seen it happen, but I’ve never minded her ways myself. There are few unexpressed thoughts hanging around in Alvah York’s head, and very little tact, but Alvah is a good person, honest and generous.
    Then I saw the supplies I’d brought in for the Yorks on Monday afternoon were exactly where I’d left them. The butter was in the refrigerator in the same place I’d laid it down, and the lettuce beside it hadn’t been washed. At least the paper towels had been unwrapped, put on the dispenser, and used, and the bread had been put into the bread box.
    I couldn’t say anything more than I’d already said. Alvah wouldn’t tell me what to do. So I mopped the kitchen.
    Alvah has her own way of spring cleaning, and I thought I remembered she began by getting all the curtains down; in fact, the pair that hung in the living room on the window facing the street had already been removed, leaving the blinds looking curiously naked. So until very recently, Alvah had been operating normally. I cleaned the exposed blinds. They were dusty; Alvah had stopped just at that point, after she’d taken down the first pair of curtains.
    “Is something wrong?” I asked reluctantly.
    Alvah maintained her silence for so long that I began to hope she wouldn’t tell me whatever it was. But finally, she began speaking. “We didn’t tell anyone around here,” she said with a great weariness. “But that man over in Creek County—that Harley Don Murrell, the one who was sentenced for rape—well, that man…the girl he raped was our granddaughter Sarah.”
    I could feel the blood drain from my face.
    “What happened?” I sat across from Alvah.
    “Thank God they don’t publish the victim’s name in the paper or put it on the news,” Alvah said. “She’s not in the hospital anymore, but T. L. thinks maybe she should be—the mental hospital. She’s just seventeen. And her husband ain’t no help—he just acts mad that this happened to her. Said if she hadn’t been wearing that leotard and tights, that man would have left her alone.”
    Alvah heaved a sigh, staring down at her coffee cup. She would have seen a different woman if she’d looked up, but I was hoping she wouldn’t look up. I was keeping my eyes open very wide so they wouldn’t overflow.
    “But he wouldn’t have,” I said. “Left her alone.”
    Wrapped in her own misery, Alvah replied, “I know that, her mother knows that, and you know that. But men always wonder, and some women, too. You should have seen that woman Murrell’s married to, her sitting up there in court when she should have been at home hiding her head in shame, acting like she didn’t have any idea in the world what her husband was up to, telling the newspaper people that Sarah was…a bad girl, that everyone in Creek County knew it, that Sarah must have led him on….”
    Then Alvah cried.
    “But he got convicted,” I said.
    “Yes,” Alvah said. “He cried and screamed and said he’d got the Lord. It didn’t do him a bit of good; he got convicted. But he’ll get out, less someone kills him in prison, which is what I pray for, though the Lord may damn me for it. They say that other prisoners don’t like rapists or child molesters. Maybe someone will kill him some night.”
    I recognized the tone, the words. I had to fight panic hard for a second. I was grateful for Alvah’s absorption in her own troubles. My hand went up to my chest, touched the light yellow of my T-shirt, felt the ridges of the scars underneath it.
    “Alvah, all I