Part 5

Lowell Vern had already left for town when David got back from the barn. There was a fresh bruise on his mother's face. She was sad... but not the kind of sad that normally accompanied fresh bruises. This was different. The instant David appeared, she rushed out of the house, picked him up, and hugged him so hard that he couldn't breathe for several seconds.

He didn't see that she was crying until after she'd put him down.

"Momma?" David said.

She picked him up again and hugged him twice as hard.

"I love you so much," she'd whispered. "My baby... my baby..."

All David could do was groan. She loosened her grip just enough to keep from suffocating him and carried him back into the house. She put him down inside.

"Um..." David began. He wanted to ask her what was wrong, but her odd expression and odder behavior made the words stick in his throat. If David had been older he might have known words like 'conflicted' or 'considering'... but he was only seven. He watched with mounting confusion... though not fear, fear would come later... as his mother alternated between staring at him and looking frantically around the house. Sometimes she appeared to be searching for something... other times she seemed to be afraid, as if someone or something had crept into the house since the last time she looked. And all the while, she cried.

"Twice," she whispered between curious glances around the house. "That's not fair. That's not fair at all. That can't be fair. They can't expect me to-"

She stopped suddenly and hurried to the window.

"Mo-" David began.

"Shhh!" She said. The crying had stopped, but there was a new expression when she turned toward him.... a dark, frenzied look. It wasn't a look David had seen before. "You weren't here! You weren't here when he left... he knows that! He knows that!"

"Who?"

"You... you... you never came back! That's it! You were gone and you never came back!"

"But I did!" David said. "I'm right her-"

"SHHH!"

She started looking around again... not in fear, but in what David might have said was 'hurried calculation' if he'd known what those words meant. With tightened lips and wild, constantly moving eyes, David's mother ran into the bedroom... the only REAL room of the house.

David took one step after her, but halted. He wasn't allowed in there. There was a loud noise like something being knocked over. Then came the rustle of clothes... and the ripping of cloth.

"Mom?" David called.

Seconds later, his mother reappeared. She'd had a cloth bundle tucked under one elbow, and in her right hand she held one of her father's knives.

It was a big knife. David didn't know how sharp it was because he wasn't allowed to touch it... but it was big.

Carrying both bundle and blade, David's mother came toward him with hurried, frenzied steps.

"You were never here!" she hissed. "Never here at all!"