The Grave Tender by Eliza Maxwell

Author:Eliza Maxwell [Maxwell, Eliza]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-01-23T05:00:00+00:00

…

Later that night, Alva had done all she could think to do. Preparing for Silas to come home hadn’t taken much time. Loading a gun is short work.

Her hands turned to household tasks out of a lifetime of habit, leaving her mind free to wander. With a certainty borne of nearly two decades of experience, Alva expected Silas back that night. When he stumbled home, hung over and stinking of bourbon, smoke and rage, it would be time to settle their accounts.

Alva doubted the likelihood she’d survive. Not so much had changed in the span of a day that she suddenly found herself physically stronger or more vicious than her husband. She knew her chances were slim to non-existent. The difference was, she’d weighed her life against her children’s freedom, and found it laughably light, carved as hollow and empty as a child’s Jack-o-lantern on Halloween.

But with the day gone and the silence of the night settling around her shoulders, Alva couldn’t stop the nervousness from creeping in. She was willing to die so that Walker and Eli could have a future. But it wasn’t her first choice.

She was desperate, and sadly lacking in options, but she wasn’t crazy. As long as the boys were set free, a ragged life was better than none at all.

A host of potential outcomes ran through her mind. Few of them included her witnessing another sunrise, but she was bound to try. Today she’d found the woman she used to be, the woman she’d been raised to be. It wasn’t in that woman’s nature to do less.

Hours passed, with no sign of Silas.

As she sat on the porch swing, the house sparkled behind her, and the scent of lemons drifted from the open windows. The loaded rifle lay across her knees, harsh and heavy over her faded apron, but the night remained stubbornly silent.

Drifting off wasn’t part of the plan.

But once her body was forced into stillness, her mind couldn’t help but follow. It was inevitable. Every one of Alva’s senses had been wide open and thrumming throughout the day and half the night. That level of intensity is impossible to keep up forever, and as it unwound, exhaustion filled the space left behind.

Her dreams were unsettled.

When the pain came, it was sharp and blinding, cutting her ties to sleep and dropping Alva back at Silas’s feet. The rifle fell to the porch with her, but it slid too far away to be anything more than a mockery.

Silas ignored the gun. He’d never needed one to teach his wife a lesson in the past, and he made no move toward it now.

He said nothing. He didn’t ask her any questions. He couldn’t care less what the answers would be. He felt nothing but satisfaction, his blood singing with the thrill of finding Alva waiting for him, with plans of her own.

She’d handed him a gift. He straddled her gently, while she was still dazed and stroked her cheek. He felt energized, renewed. The pain in his head that had travelled home with him after days of liquor and excess was gone.

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