It will be light soon, and Cecily can’t think of anywhere on the Price property that is safe enough for her to go.
“There’s that old boathouse, down on the Fulcher property,” says Della. “Go on in there and find somewhere to hide, and I’ll be there when I can.”
“How long, you think?”
“I don’t know,” says Della. “A day. Maybe two. Just get some sleep and don’t come out till I say.”
“Mama,” says Cecily, wanting to tell her something true, “I’m scared.”
Della nods quiet and slow, then she gives her daughter a sad smile. “I’d be more scared if you wasn’t.”
SALLY
By the time Sally arrivesin front of Archie and Margaret’s house, it’s almost morning and she is delirious with exhaustion. Even the latch on the gate, which is a simple enough mechanism, seems impossible to open, and she tugs at it once and then twice before gaining entrance to the yard.
The creak of the gate’s hinges attracts the attention of Archie’s dogs, mongrels both of them, who alert the household, or what is left of it, that there is a visitor. By the time Sally has taken a half-dozen steps into the yard, the Campbells’ gardener, Joe, has started hollering, “Miss Sally’s here! Everybody! Miss Sally’s alive!”
Sally gives him a sad grin. It has been a long time since anyone was this excited to see her coming. But her face freezes when, behind Joe, she sees Archie hurry around the side of the house.
God almighty. It is like seeing a ghost. She knows she should be relieved to find him in one piece, but all she can ask is “What are you doing here?”
“My dear girl,” he says as he pushes past Joe and closes the distance between them. He is breathing hard. “You’re alive. I can scarcely believe it.”
“No, Archie, seriously. How did you—”
She can’t get anything else out. Her brother-in-law has caught her up in his arms and is squeezing her so tight that her feet lose contact with the ground.
“I thought you were dead,” he says, and because Mrs. Cowley loaned her a pair of boots, which pinch her heels, she allows Archie to lift her off the ground and rock her back and forth, until she feels his chest heave with sobs.
“Put me down, Archie.”
It’s all so infuriating. How can it be that he has barely a scratch on him, when across town Margaret is fighting for her life?
“Now,” she says.
He does as he is told, then grips her hands and presses them to his face as he cries, “Oh, my poor Margaret.”
It is tempting to let him carry on like this, but she doesn’t have the stamina. She eases her hands out of his grip. “Archie, Margaret is alive.”
His breath catches in his throat and he sputters, “What?”
“I found her. In the passageway.”
“But the stairs.”
“We jumped.”
The color drains from his face, and his lower lip trembles. “I circled the building. Twice, three times. I checked all the windows. You weren’t there.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” says Sally, who has to remind herself not to apologize for her own survival.
“And she’s,” Archie hesitates to ask, “all right?”
“She has a badly broken leg, which will require surgery.”
“Surgery?”
Archie knows, as well as anyone, that surgery is a dangerous enterprise, but she fills him in on everything Mrs. Cowley and Dr. Foushee have told her. “Dr. Foushee will return to Mrs. Cowley’s in a couple of hours, and he needs to know what we want to do.” If Archie notices her use of the wordwe, he doesn’t let on.
