Untethered by Marcia Lynn McClure Read Free Book Online Page B

folded the clipping and returned it to its place in the old wooden chest at the foot of her bed.
    It was all so unbelievably horrific, so painful, so heinous! She thought too that Ranger Thibodaux had been right: all eight of the girls who had died were free from their pain and misery, safe in the glories of heaven. And yet their families were left to mourn them—to drown in a grief that even ever-sympathetic Magnolia Cricket Cranford could not imagine.
    And what of Heathro Thibodaux? As always, it was Heathro that Cricket felt most sorry for. What a burden it must’ve been to bear—to know that he was correct in his estimations that the white slavers meant to take the girls to New Orleans . But because none of the other Rangers had believed him, every girl had died—and Ranger Thibodaux had helplessly watched as they had.
    With another exhaled sigh of near despair, Cricket crawled back into her bed. She closed her eyes and listened as the fragrant evening breeze of summer caressed the leaves of the trees outside her open bedroom window. She could hear the crickets underneath the back porch as they played their soothing song—hear the croaking of the bullfrogs along the banks of the stream and the melodic tinkling of Mrs. Maloney’s wind chimes in the distance. She inhaled deeply the aroma of the breeze, of fresh-from-the-oven bread that someone in town was baking—the sweet scent of the summer grasses, wildflowers, and the mellow bouquet of the small herd of cattle that Mr. Burroughs had driven to town in order to load onto the train the next day.
    And yet it wasn’t until an image of Heathro Thibodaux settled into her mind that she was able to stop more tears from trickling over her temples. At lease he’d lived. The girls—all eight of the Tuner Bend girls—had died. But at least the world hadn’t lost Heathro Thibodaux too.
    Cricket thought of the plans she and her friends had made earlier in the day. She thought of how delighted Mrs. Maloney would be when she opened her door Friday night to see the beautiful teapot Vilma had sold her hair to purchase sitting on her front porch. She thought of Mr. Keel. Even a lonesome man would appreciate a new quilt—especially one so lovingly stitched as the one Ann had made for him was. She thought of Hudson Oliver and how, in one way or the other, his life would never be the same once Marie had confessed her feelings. And she thought of Heathro Thibodaux—thought that if anyone in Pike’s Creek deserved to be welcomed to town, deserved a kiss, then it was the heroic young Texas Ranger who had at least tried to save the abducted girls of Turner Bend.
    Cricket pictured him then—the way he’d appeared earlier in the day as he’d stood on the bank of the swimming hole. A body would never know just by looking at him that he owned such a past. Muscular and strong, handsome, and alluring, he looked nothing like a man who had endured the horrors that he had.
    The crickets congregated under the back porch abruptly stopped their song. Cricket knew her father must’ve gone out to close the barn doors for the night. Still, it wasn’t long before the musicians for which she was nicknamed began to play once more.
    “Play on, my dear ones,” Cricket whispered. She smiled a moment as she thought of the day her father had explained that he and her mother had begun calling her Cricket when, at the age of four, they had begun to wonder if she would ever stop talking. As crickets played incessantly, it seemed Magnolia Cranford prattled and chirped with full the same vigor and consistency.
    “Play on,” she whispered again. “Sing me to sleep. Drive away this sad feelin’ my heart is achin’ with.” She brushed one last tear from her temple as she turned on her side, fluffed her pillow, and sighed. “And play a pretty song for Mr. Thibodaux too please. He more than earned the right to be soothed by your gentle melody.”

Chapter T hree
     
    “You gonna drop in on Mrs.