South of Shiloh by Chuck Logan

Author:Chuck Logan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780061844652
Publisher: HarperCollins

Jenny looked up and saw the bartender standing in front of her, drying his hands on a towel. “You all right, here?” he asked. Jenny realized she was trembling.

She knit her nerves into a tight girdle and controlled the worst of it. “Fine, just a little tired.”

“I hear you,” the bartender said. “It’s going around. Everybody’s too busy. Too much going on.”

“Exactly,” Jenny said. The tremor passed and she sat up straighter. The bartender nodded, moved off down the counter, and joined two older men in conversation. Refocusing, Jenny eavesdropped on their banter.

First man, who was black, said to the bartender, jerking his thumb at his larger companion: “Been telling Curly here he looks like he’s growing tits.”

Second man, who was white, hunched over like a corpulent toad pooled around a thimble of a shot glass. “Fuckin’ doc got it wrong. Damn testosterone injections. You take ’em without the Arimidex it elevates the estrogen. Whatyacallit—enhances feminine attributes…”

Jenny almost laughed, and the odd counterpoint snapped her out of her funk. Methodically, she backtracked over every moment of her recent conversation with John Rane. She pushed the scotch away and stood up. He called her at home. The journal, of course. But there was more, he’d had a purpose.

Slowly, she lowered her hand in the jacket pocket and closed her fingers on the key.

Rane didn’t come out and say things. His style was visual: to demonstrate, to act. Like playing the piano for Molly. It hit her so suddenly it blew away all the obscuring clutter. Was it that simple? He gave her a key.

A key to unlock what?

Him.

Five minutes later she was parked in front of Rane’s house, staring at the empty driveway. Okay. He’s gone. She got out of the car.

Holding the key in her outstretched hand, she walked up the cracked pavement, inserted the key in the lock, turned it, and then pushed open the door.

Hajji, the cat, poked his whiskers around the kitchen doorjamb, inspecting her, then withdrew. Immediately she saw the portfolio sitting on the coffee table in front of the couch. She advanced a step and read the name printed on the yellow Post-it.

JENNY.

She flipped open the cover and held her breath when she saw the crisp black-and-white photo on top of the pile. A picture of her with a full-term belly bulging over the elastic band of the loose blue calico skirt she’d worn the last week of her pregnancy…

In the picture she held a spray of flowers in the crook of her left arm and carried a pair of snips in her right hand. She was stooping slightly, cutting the wild flowers that grew in the garden. The old tilted cement birdbath in the background told her that had all been taken in the backyard of the starter house where she and Paul had lived next to Lake Como in St. Paul.

Jenny put out a hand to break her fall as she wobbled down and sat on the floor. Before the surge of emotion defeated her thinking and flooded her vision with tears, she had one moment of clarity.

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