The Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Pickard Read Free Book Online

him—”
    Her voice trailed off, and she finally began to cry.

    When her mother found her there ten minutes later, Margie put her arms around her sobbing daughter.
    “How did you know where to find me?” Abby wept into her shoulder.
    Her mother looked as if she had run all the way through the snow. She had on a jacket, but it wasn’t even zipped, and she wasn’t wearing gloves, hat, or boots. With her feet clad in nothing but loafers and socks, Abby’s mother stood in the deep snow and held her.
    “Nadine called, and told me to come get you.” Margie tightened her grip on her younger child, and whispered back with a tearful vehemence that turned her vow to a hiss, “I’ll kill her for hurting you like this!” She stroked the back of Abby’s head with one hand, and wiped her own tears with her other hand. Pulling back just enough to be able to look into her daughter’s brimming eyes, she said, “Come on, let’s get out of here. Let’s go home, sweetheart.”

 

    Chapter Six
    When Rex staggered down to breakfast that same morning, he found his mother seated at the kitchen table with her head in her hands, instead of cooking breakfast as she usually did. No wonder he’d come down late, he thought; there had been no smell of bacon frying to lure him out of bed. The whole house felt cold and looked dreary, even though the snow had finally stopped and bright sunshine was coming through the windows.
    He dragged himself up out of his own misery enough to say, “You okay, Mom?” When she looked up, he saw that she wasn’t. “You look awful!”
    “I feel even worse than I look, and please don’t comment on that.”
    “Where’s Pat?”
    “Asleep.”
    “You want me to fix you something?”
    She shook her head, but winced as if it hurt. “Your dad needs to see you in the barn.”
    “When?”
    “He said, as soon as you got up.”
    “Have you talked to Doc Reynolds?” he asked her.
    She looked startled at his question, but then seemed to realize that what he had meant was simply, “Did you call your doctor?”
    “I’m afraid he’ll send me to Emporia, Rex. To the hospital. I think I have pneumonia.”
    “Mom! If you don’t call him, I will.”
    “I’ll do it. Go to the barn.” But before he could leave the house, she stopped him. “Rex? You asked if I’m okay, but I didn’t ask if—”
    “I’m fine, Mom.”
    He wasn’t anywhere near fine, “fine” was a distant country he was sure he’d never see again, but he didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to think about it, either, although he couldn’t stop. He was surprised he had slept at all, and he felt as if he hadn’t. His hand was definitely broken, no doubt about it. It was swollen to twice the size of his other hand, fluorescently discolored, and it hurt like holy hell. It was an indication of how rotten his mother felt, Rex knew, that she hadn’t even asked about it. He was careful to keep it hidden behind him, so she wouldn’t be reminded of it, and feel she needed to do something about it. And anyway, his hand was nothing. It didn’t hurt at all, compared to the way his heart felt. It, too, felt swollen, bruised, broken.
    The snow had stopped falling, leaving more than two feet of white covering everything. That was two feet that would be multiplied by the many square feet that Rex figured he was going to have to plow and shovel before the morning got much further along. How he was going to manage to do that with a broken fist was just something else he wanted to avoid thinking about. Everything felt like an insurmountable task. He was so exhausted that he felt like there ought to be a warning label attached to his body:
Do not allow to operate large machinery.
His brain was foggy with stress and lack of sleep, and he felt as forgetful as if he had never done chores before, never fed horses or mucked out a stall. He felt as if somebody was going to have to take him by the hand—the one that didn’t hurt—and lead