“What do we do now?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Pray, I guess. Can murderers pray?”
“That bastard deserved what he got. Don’t think about him anymore.”
“He deserved worse,” Viola said with venom. “I won’t lose no sleep over that trash. I just … I guess I don’t know what to do next, either.”
“One day at a time,” Tom said, hating the impotence in his voice. “That’s all we can do. And pray the worst is over.”
But it wasn’t over. Not by a damn sight—
“Tom?” Peggy moaned, sitting up in bed, then shielding her eyes against the reading light she’d left on.
“What’s the matter, honey?” he asked.
Peggy rubbed her eyes until she was more than half awake. “I had a nightmare.”
“Are you all right?”
“I don’t know.” She felt along the bedside table for her water glass, then took a gulp. “We were at a funeral.”
“Whose funeral?”
Peggy blinked, still bleary with sleep. “I don’t know. I saw the casket there, and I was holding Annie’s hand, and she was crying.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. It was just a dream.”
“It felt so real. I’m trying to remember who was sitting with us. I want to know.”
You want to know who was in the casket, he thought. “You said ‘we’ when you woke up. Was I sitting with you?”
Peggy’s eyes widened suddenly. “Oh, Tom. I think it was one of the kids. Penn or Jenny. Dear God.”
He laid his hand on her forearm and squeezed. “It doesn’t matter who it was, Peg. That was just a dream.”
She stared at him with almost frightening intensity. “I’m telling you, it felt real. Like it means something. It couldn’t, could it?”
“No. It’s just the stress of today, and tomorrow. Premonitions of death are a normal human feeling during times like this.”
Peggy took his hand and fixed her eyes on him with solemn deliberation of a priest. “Tom … I want to talk to you about last night.”
He felt his defenses go up. “Peg—”
“I know you don’t want to talk about it,” she said quickly. “But I feel like we should. We have to, don’t we? I’m not sure I can go on if we don’t.”
He met her gaze but said nothing.
“I know sometimes it’s better to leave some things unsaid,” she went on. “And maybe this is one of those times. But I truly feel like something terrible is coming toward us.”
Tom closed his other hand over hers. “If you really want to talk about it, we can. But I think this is one of those times where it’s best to move forward, and not look back. Remember Lot’s wife.”
As Peggy gazed back at him across fifty years of experience, he knew that she understood him better than anyone ever had—better even than Viola, in most ways. Her hazel eyes moved across his face, missing nothing. Then she said, “I’m going to try to go back to sleep.”
He gave her an encouraging smile. “Everything’s going to be all right tomorrow. You’ll see.”
“You don’t think you should listen to Penn? About hiring Quentin?”
“There may come a time for that. But right now I think I’m better off following my own counsel.”
She patted the quilt over his thigh. “All right. Do you want to take one of my pills?”
“Better not. I’m fine, Peg. Go back to sleep.”
She stared sadly at him for a few moments, then patted his side and lay back down. Seconds later she began to snore again.
Tom thought of all the years that had passed since he’d given up Viola, years drifting down upon each other like leaves settling on a forest floor. Over time those leaves had hardened and begun to petrify. The young Tom Cage—the man who had loved Viola with soul-searing ardor—lay somewhere beneath those leaves, entombed in ash like an ember after a wildfire. And Viola … whatever had remained of her younger self was long gone. That person existed only as a memory that occasionally flickered to life in the minds of those she had treated decades ago. There were probably patients she’d touched similarly in Chicago, hundreds of them, but Tom knew nothing of those people, or those years. And he suspected that the Viola they had known was not quite the same enchanted spirit who had so blessed the people of Natchez.
A fearful ache went through him as he thought of his impending arrest. He had already laid out his clothes on a chair, in case the sheriff came early. Peggy had helped, never once questioning him about anything deeper than his choice of shirt and tie. Rebuffing Penn all day had been more difficult than dealing with his wife. It was a tempting proposition to simply put himself in his son’s hands. Penn had the legal talent and experience to do as good a job as anyone alive defending him. But to do that, Penn would need the truth, and Tom was not prepared to burden him with that. Not yet. He might never be.
For now, Walt Garrity would be his ally. The old Texas Ranger wasn’t a lawyer, but he had other talents. More to the point, Walt had shared horrific trials with Tom. Together they had endured things that young men should never be asked to witness, much less take part in, and they had survived them together. They had literally saved each other’s lives. If Tom was going to be confined in jail, he couldn’t ask for a better second pair of eyes and ears than those of Walt Garrity. At least that had been the reasoning that prompted his earlier call to Walt.