Book of Life Page 25

  He jerked away, his face filled with a mix of anger and confusion, the smell of lightly singed skin filling the car. “Get away from me!” he gasped.

  His reaction was genuine. From his gut to his lips, his conscience had changed his mind. I had lost David long before I’d gotten a real chance at having him.

  I exhaled away my losses as the sound of the machine grew louder. Lights barreled toward us through the wheat-to-be. I leaned back. “I’m sorry,” I whispered and shook my head. I knew he couldn’t hear me but Mother could. David wasn’t the one for me after all. “I think you should go,” I yelled over the grinding of gears, assuming it was the thing to say, though I was in his car. He looked at me in clear agreement.

  Feeling flustered, I quickly reached for my sweater and got out of David’s truck. “Thanks again,” I yelled out of habit, not too sure what I was thinking. Manners no longer had merit. I was biting back the urge to cry, the fibers of the sweater in my hand twisting under my blistering grip. Considering the circumstances, manners were all I could cling to.

  The combine stopped just inches from the hood of David’s truck, letting out a loud moan. David’s truck clicked into reverse and pulled away fast. I waited, staring angrily at the lights of the machine before me. There was a cry of metal hinges, and a shadow hopped down onto the side of the combine. “Girl!” The anger in my father’s voice swept effortlessly over the noise of the machine. “Get on over here, right now!”

  I inched my way over the dirt road. David and his truck were long gone, and there was no telling what he thought of me now, though I had a good idea. I’d made another believer out of him. How stupid of me. This was how it always started. This was why the rumors even existed. So many boys found my beauty irresistible—until they met my father and my fury, a dangerous combination.

  Father marched across the distance between us. I braced myself for the worst. Without hesitation, he grabbed my arm with his gloved hand, dragging me back to the machine. He let go and climbed on before turning back and easily lifting me onto the combine. My feet searched for footing until he tossed me down onto the decking beside him. “Whadya doin’ with that boy? You gonna get yerself knocked up, and I ain’t keepin’ you in no state like that. Yer enough trouble already,” he grumbled.

  I rubbed my wrist, knowing that it was destined to bruise. Had he not been wearing gloves, I would have been able to hurt him back, but tonight he seemed a little more in tune with the world. He must have been out of beer.

  “I see ya with that boy again, and I’ll hit ya till there’s nothin’ left,” he warned.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing he were joking but knowing he wasn’t. Despite how hard he was on me, I really couldn’t blame him for being that way. He had no idea how to raise a child, let alone one like me. I had killed his wife and brought shame upon him. Tears formed in my eyes. To my relief, he’d had his fill of punishing me and climbed back into the cabin of the combine. I was left on the decking where I would stay, just to be away from him.

  The machine lurched forward, the blades stationary. He’d done this for the sole reason of making a point, as he always did. Showing up with a shotgun in his hand wasn’t drama enough for him. My father had to bring his ten-ton combine to the dance. Why couldn’t he be more traditional? Why couldn’t he leave me alone? But most of all, why couldn’t he love me?

  I rocked along with the swaying of the combine. Minutes passed as we swept over the green hills that led back to the house in the gully of the fifty-acre field. I shut my eyes and listened to the sound of the grass brushing over the machine, the engine’s roar putting me in a trance. I jolted out of it as I felt a tickle on my arm. At first, I was tempted to swat at it, thinking it was a spider or small grasshopper, but it was a ladybug. In the dimness of the combine lights, it sat, its red coat heavily contrasted against the pale color of my skin. The corner of my mouth curled, despite my sadness, and I soaked in the bit of good luck the creature could give me.

  It remained motionless, as though watching me in return. Its wings were without spots, a rarity, and surely a sign of even more good luck, a thing I lacked more than anything else. Wings parting, it fluttered and fluffed before repositioning itself, tiny legs grasping me. It was not bothered by the slowly dying heat of my fever. In fact, it seemed to draw from my heat and grow brighter. At least it didn’t recoil from touching me as most people did. Maybe it could love me. At last, the combine came to a jolting stop beside the barn. The engine shut off, and my ears rang. As the door to the cabin swung open, the ladybug left. A chill replaced the brief happiness I had felt.

  I looked up at my father, but he did not look at me. He jumped down from the combine and walked off without another word. Though I longed for anything from him besides hate, I gladly accepted his silence instead. Silence was good.

  I waited for him to enter the house through the side door where I kept my young chickens in a box on the screened-in porch. I heard him feed them and talk to them gently. I was jealous—jealous of a chicken that, in six weeks, would grace my supper plate. He showed them affection where he showed me none. I guess they had more of a menial purpose.

  I sighed and wrinkled my brow. Pushing myself off the decking of the combine, I jumped to the ground and found refuge in the barn, figuring I’d wait for Father to find his place in front of the TV with a Pabst in his hand before sneaking in behind him and up to my room.

  In the barn, Axon murmured gently, tapping his hooves against the stall floor. Axon had been a guilt gift from my father. There had been a point in my young life when my father acknowledged his abusive behavior by presenting me with such a gift. But that was a long time ago. Aside from the necessary things my father bought me like clothes for school and food, Axon was the only thing I considered a real gift, the only thing I had to suggest that under it all, my father did love me. Unfortunately, that love was buried deep. It would take a miracle to bring it out for good.

  I guess you could also wonder why I haven’t just run away to be placed in foster care. The truth is: Foster care frightens me. Someone like me, with my curse, would bounce around in a system like that. I was happier to stay here with my horse and what little family I had. At least this way I felt some semblance of stability in my otherwise chaotic life. Most of all, there was an attachment to my mother here.

  I walked up to Axon, kissing him on the nose as he huffed and whinnied more loudly. Cutting open a fresh bale of hay, I tossed him his evening flake and listened to him eat. I sat on a stool and leaned against the stall door, looking at the ground. I swept my foot across the dirt, digging at an embedded rock with the tip of my boot. The smell of dried hay mixing with Axon’s saliva seeped through the cracks in the stall door. I liked the smell. It reminded me of something happy, though I knew little of happiness.

  As I continued to dig away at the small rock, it soon began to glint and glitter. I stopped, wrinkling my brow and leaning forward. I touched the small rock and felt metal instead. Quickly I grabbed a bale hook and dug away at the dirt surrounding the metallic object until a half circle peeked out from the ground. I threaded the tip of the bale hook through the circle and tugged until the object pulled free from the earth.

  It was a key.

  I smiled brightly because I knew this wasn’t just any key, but a key from my mother. I hadn’t gotten one in what seemed months, and I was beginning to fear that she was forgetting about me. I polished the key with the hem of my shirt.

  Each key was different, each hinting at whatever the box would contain. Tonight the key was simple and made of brass. The ring that topped it was perfectly round in both shape and design. The barrel of the key was a little thicker than the ring, the nose shaped squarely with a simple notch, like a multi-purpose skeleton key.

  Once I had cleaned it of the tarnish and dirt, I slid it into the pocket of my jeans and stood. I found the hose and filled Axon’s water before shutting off the lights in the barn and securing the door with a lock to keep out the coyotes. As
I walked across the yard, gravel crunched beneath my feet. Though the night wanted to make me feel more alone than ever, the continuing truth was that I wasn’t alone—at least not in spirit.

  Reaching the house, I quietly allowed my feet to roll over each step up to the screened-in porch. I peeled open the outer door. The chickens rustled as the door squealed and squeaked. I twisted the knob to the main door and sneaked into the front hall. I could hear the baseball game on the TV in the other room, my father murmuring something in reply to whatever the announcer was saying. I slid out of my boots and left them in the bin beside the front hall bench. Biting my lip, I slipped around the corner and up the stairs, running as though being chased by a ghost, though the only ghost seemed to be me.

  Once in my room, I shut the door and bolted it with the lock I had installed when I was thirteen. Leaning against the handle, I took a deep breath. I was happy to be someplace familiar, someplace safe. I sank to the floor and sat with my back against the door for a moment, letting the night’s trial and failure roll off my back and be forgotten, as I’d forced myself to do a hundred times. Feeling more at peace a moment later, I fell forward and threw my arms under my bed, searching for a box, the only thing my mother had left me.

  Everything my mother had once owned had been destroyed by my father. His pain at her death turned him bitter. Avoidance was the only way he could cope. He hated the fact that I had been able to keep this box, but there really wasn’t much he could do about it. He’d taken it from me, smashed it, hid it, burned it, done everything he could think of, but no matter what, it always ended up back under my bed, right where I had found it years and years ago. I slid it out and set it on my lap, opening the lid to reveal nothing but four walls made of dark, stained wood, tattered with age. Its hinges were made of thick steel and often whined. The lock, which matched the hinges, was pierced with a hole that fed to a hidden clasp that secured it. The box was empty for now but not for long.

  I shut it, giving it a shake to engage the lock. Hearing the familiar clank, I then held it in one hand, fingering the metallic lock with my other. I gently traced the traditional shape, a circle with a rectangular slit bleeding from the bottom. I forced my hand into the pocket of my stiff jeans and retrieved the key I’d found in the barn. I took a deep breath as my hand shook with anticipation. It always shook. No matter how many keys I’d found, it still filled me with the same childish wonder it had the very first time I’d opened it.

  Slowly, I introduced the brass key to the metallic lock. It slid in perfectly, as though the lock were made solely for this key, just this one time. I twisted the handle, and the box, like magic, suddenly grew heavy with new contents. I reveled in the reality of it and dreamed of the origin of whatever was inside. As always, I decided that the origin was Heaven, where I knew Mother had to be.

  Carefully, I nudged the lid from the base of the box and opened it, revealing other-worldly contents. When I was a child, the box had held toys or sometimes candy. As a young girl, I received makeup and, from time to time, a simple object my mother knew I’d enjoy.

  Tonight, though, it was something different. Tonight her gift meant more. I needed more. A miniature tree had grown right out of the wood of the box. Small, waxy leaves bloomed vibrant green. Each leaf twisted and moved as though on a breeze, a soft rustling accompanying its dance. In the center of it all sat the very same ladybug that had graced me on the combine, spotless, happy, and contentedly watching me as it had before.

  I wondered what it meant and why such a gift had transcended this reality to the next then back again in the box from my mother.

  Since my sixteenth birthday, the previous year, the keys had grown riddled with hidden meaning, making more of the simple gifts I had once received. It was as though my mother were trying to tell me something, to make me think more deeply with each key and each year that passed. She was guiding me somewhere, much as Fate guides everyone, though mine was more noticeable. I was always scared of what her riddles meant, afraid that, one day, I would be faced with a major life change. I didn’t understand what the tree or the ladybug foretold, but I knew it was the harbinger of something greater.

  I looked at the ladybug, wanting so badly to envelope it in my arms, but knowing its size made such a task insurmountable. The bug was a new, perplexing development, its meaning buried in hours of future research. It crawled slowly over the leaves before stopping to brush its head with one leg. Its wings parted momentarily then settled back. I placed the box on my bedside table and crawled under the covers, not bothering to remove my clothes. Turning on my side, I watched the ladybug until sleep overtook me, knowing that, at least for tonight, the ladybug would stay with me.

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Knight Angels: Book of Life (Book Three)

  Max discreetly looked around the

  Midpoint

  PREFACE