“You’ll pay for the wait time?” he asked.
“Yes, of course.” I had the feeling he’d be telling his buddies that Hank Kraft’s widow went to Colored Town after dark, but I didn’t really care. I watched Hickory sail by outside the window. I couldn’t wait to see Reverend Sam.
*
“Ah!” Reverend Sam said when he answered his door. “I’ve been expecting you, child.” He stepped aside to let me in.
“You have?” I asked.
“Yes, I was certain you’d want to try to connect with your husband. I was sorry to hear of his passing. Even though he didn’t think much of me, did he?”
I didn’t bother responding. I was too anxious to get to the anteroom, and I nearly plowed ahead of him down the hallway. I let him catch up to me. Let him be the one to open the anteroom door. As I’d expected, the skeleton was gone.
“Where is it?” I asked. “Your skeleton?”
“It was stolen,” he said, hands on his hips. “Very strange. I came down here a couple of mornings ago and it was gone.” We stood in the center of the small anteroom, staring at the empty place where the skeleton used to stand. “That was the only thing missing as far as I could tell.” He swept his arm around the room, taking in the other artifacts. “Very odd, don’t you think?” He walked toward the open door to his office.
“Very odd,” I agreed, following him into the smaller room. “You said your power came from your artifacts,” I said as I sat down opposite him. “So have you lost your power without the skeleton here?”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t seem to have affected my ability to connect at all,” he said. He reached across the desk, motioning for my hands. “Let’s put it to the test, shall we?”
For twenty minutes or longer, we sat across from one another as he tried and failed to contact my husband.
“I’m sorry, Tess,” he said finally. “It seems your husband is still not too fond of me.”
“It’s all right,” I said, sitting back in the chair. If anything, I believed in Reverend Sam and his abilities more than ever now. After all, it was impossible to connect with the spirit of someone who was still alive.
“I don’t think it has anything to do with my missing skeleton affecting my powers though,” he said, getting to his feet. “I had a couple of good readings this morning.”
“Henry’s just being stubborn.” I smiled at him as we walked out of his office and into the anteroom. I wondered if he thought I sounded quite flip for a new widow, but he returned my smile.
“Yes, I believe he is,” he said, and either he winked at me or he had something in his eye.
I stopped walking and studied him curiously. “Did you call the police about the stolen skeleton?” I asked.
“No,” he said, looking at the empty spot in the room where the skeleton had been. “I’ve always believed that if a person steals something from me, he needs that something more than I do. That’s probably the case with my skeleton. What do you think?”
He knows, I thought, and I wondered if Henry had stolen the skeleton or if it had been a gift.
“What I think,” I said, leaning forward to give him a kiss on the cheek, “is that you’re a good and generous man, and I’m very glad I met you.”
82
I could barely concentrate on my work the next morning at the hospital. It was my first day back since the fire, and I’m sure my coworkers thought my distraction had to do with grief. They had no idea what was really going through my mind: where was my husband and what did he have up his sleeve?
I was also exhausted. I’d called Grace Wilding when I got home from Ridgeview the night before to ask if I could stay with her for a while.
“Of course,” she’d said. She’d asked no prying questions and I was grateful, both for a place to stay and for her kindness. I moved my things to her apartment in the middle of the night, leaving a curt note for Ruth about where I’d gone. It was a relief to be out of that house.
People were so kind to me at the hospital that morning. “You should have taken more time off,” they all said. “It’s so soon, and you must still be so upset about Mr. Kraft.”
I gave each of them my stock answer. “Thank you, but it’s best for me to keep busy.”
Grace had taken over most of Amy Pryor’s care in my absence, but we had many new patients and they kept me occupied. While I bathed them and fed them and wrapped their limbs in hot wool, I was constantly looking through the screened windows for Zeke. I needed to talk to him. I was sure he knew the truth, in spite of his bravura performance at the house the other night when we were anxiously waiting for news about Henry’s fate. They were as close as brothers, those two.
Late that morning, I finally spotted Zeke walking from the stone building toward his truck, and I knew I needed to catch up with him quickly before he drove off. I was in the middle of feeding a two-year-old girl, but I called to one of the volunteers and asked if she could take over for me.
“Of course, Mrs. Kraft,” she said, and she took the spoon from my hand and gave me a little push toward the door. She probably thought my grief had suddenly gotten the better of me and I needed a break. I thanked her and nearly flew out of the building. I caught up with Zeke as he was opening the door to his truck.
“I need to talk to you,” I said as I neared him.
“What about?” he asked, his hand on the door handle.
“Where is he?” I asked quietly. “Where’s Henry?”
“I reckon he’s with his maker,” he said, and for a fleeting moment, I was afraid I’d guessed wrong and Henry really hadn’t told him his plan. But then I saw a flicker of light in his long-lashed eyes. “Why would you think anything else?” he asked.
“I know he’s alive,” I said. “And I know he wanted me to figure it out.”
He looked away from me and I saw his Adam’s apple bob in his throat. He wasn’t sure he could trust me.
“You don’t need to worry,” I added. “I understand this was his way of setting me free.”
He nodded then, and I saw relief in his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly right.”
“What I don’t understand,” I said, “is how this sets him free.”
He glanced behind me as though trying to see if anyone was around to overhear us. “Get in the truck,” he said.
I walked around to the other side of the truck and climbed in. He started the truck and we drove along the dirt road until we came to the clearing where the National Guard had cut down trees to use in building one of the wards. The expanse of stumps had an eerie feel to it, a sea of light and shadow, and I shivered. Zeke turned off the engine.
“He’s goin’ out west,” he said, facing me. “Right now he’s on a bus somewhere in the middle of the country on his way to Washington State.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “Washington? Where his friend Gaston is?”
He nodded. “He’ll stay with Gaston and Loretta.”