Carnal Innocence

fun.
    She skidded on the wet road, and slowed to a crawl.
    She wasn’t going to put up with it anymore. Cryinghadn’t worked, and she’d cried buckets. Keeping the house nice and putting a hot meal on the table every night hadn’t done much good either. Junior just ate whatever she put in front of him and went off to play with Scooter.
    Tonight he was going to play with his wife.
    She knew just how to set the stage. There was that new nightgown she’d mail-ordered—for Billy T.’s benefit, but that didn’t matter. She’d spent the best part of the afternoon in the Style Rite getting her hair washed and set. She’d even suffered through having Betty Pruett wax her eyebrows and the little fuzz over her top lip.
    All that was left was to set the stage.
    She had that bayberry-scented candle left over from Christmas, a Randy Travis album, and a bottle of cold duck. Junior got positively romantic after a couple of glasses of cold duck.
    Once she got him back in bed, he’d forget all about Billy T. and his manly pride. She’d be his devoted wife. And if she ever took on a boyfriend again, she’d be a damn sight more careful.
    She almost didn’t hit the brakes in time. The curtain of rain obscured the road so that she didn’t see the car sitting across it until it was nearly too late. Her tires slipped and skidded. She gave a quick squeal as she fishtailed sideways. When the bumpers barely kissed, she sat back, one hand over her speeding heart.
    “Goddamn.” She squinted through the windshield but could see no one, just the abandoned car stretched diagonally across the road. “Well, isn’t this just fine and dandy.” Shakily, she pushed open her door and stepped out into the storm. Instantly her hair was plastered over her eyes so that she had to scrape it back. “Twenty-two seventy-five shot to hell!” she shouted to the rain. “Chrissakes, how’m I supposed to get my husband back if I go home looking like a drowned cat?”
    She thought that over, decided it might work to her advantage on the sympathy scale. But if she wanted Junior to fuss and pet because she’d got caught in the rain, she had to get home first. Hands on hips, she kicked the tire of the car blocking the road.
    “How the hell’s anybody supposed to get around that?” The prospect of turning around and going back to her mother’s was so daunting, she ignored the rain and walked around the car to find a solution.
    She was looking through the window, hoping to see keys in the ignition, when she heard the sound behind her. Her heart leapt into her throat, then settled again when she recognized the familiar form coming through the rain.
    “Thought this was your car,” she shouted. “These roads are so wet, I nearly plowed right through. Junior’d have skinned me alive if I’d’ve wrecked this car.”
    “I’ll save him the trouble.”
    Darleen never saw the tire iron that smashed over her head.
    The power flickered on and off before finally wheezing out during a particularly robust clap of thunder. Caroline had prepared by setting emergency candles and oil lamps in every room.
    She didn’t mind the dark, or the storm. In fact, she relished them. She was hoping the phone lines would go as well so that she could stop having to answer the sympathetic and curious calls that had hounded her throughout the day. But if the power stayed off through the night, she didn’t want to have to stumble blindly through the house, taking a chance on meeting Austin Hatinger’s grinning ghost.
    She watched the rain and the wind from the cover of the porch while Useless cowered inside, whimpering. It was a powerful show. With barely a tree to stop it, the wind roared across the flats and rattled shingles, jiggled windows, hooted through grass.
    She didn’t know whether this violent a rain was good or bad for the crops, though she was certain she’d be told all about it when she drove into town. For now, it was enough just to watch, to be awed, to know there was a dry, candlelit house behind her, waiting to offer sanctuary.
    Shelter, she corrected herself, and smiled. Whatwould the good doctor Palamo have to say about her use of the word sanctuary? A reflex reaction, she decided. She was no longer running or hiding. For the first time in her life she was just living.
    Or trying to.
    She’d certainly hidden from Tucker that morning. She’d accepted sex but turned away intimacy. Because she’d needed to prove she was alive, and had been